I actually liked In Bruges until the last half hour of the film. What was the point of the movie if the two main characters were going to end up dead? Not that we know 100% if Ray dies but most likely he does. I found the end kind of unrealistic especially in regards to their deaths. I was surprised at how long it took these characters to die. It took Ken getting shot and to fall from a building and he still was not dead until minutes after the fall. Also Ray, he got shot what 8 times? Yet he was still alive and moving, the dragging out of their deaths was annoying. And I didn’t see the point of Ray dying, especially since in most of the film we see Ken convincing him and helping him to not kill himself. He even sacrifices his own life to save Ray for absolutely no reason. Also it seemed like him and Chloe were going to have some type of future together where Ray can take Ken’s advice from all that happened. It was also just so predictable at times, like when Ray is on the boat and he says how it is too far of a distance for him to get shot, and of course he does. Also, when Harry shoots Ray and we see that Jimmy gets killed, I had a feeling that was going to happen, especially when Harry was telling Ken if he was in Ray’s position he would have killed himself on the spot and also with the amount of people that were there. I did like the film at first, I though it had a good plot and humor but I just thought the ending ruined it.
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This is a neat discussion–I have to come down with Bahar on the symmetry and logic of the ending. Seems to me that Ken, with a gunshot to the head, knew he was dying and jumped so that his death could have some value. To me what is strange about the scene is the timing–Ken gets up the stairs before Harry gets down; linear time seems disrupted.
The innkeeper is willing to get in Harry’s way not b/c she cares about Ray but b/c she sees how constructed all this gangster nonsense is–she is forcing them to admit that they are performing. I love the irony of her certainty that she won’t be shot when these two characters do both end up having killed “children.”
For some bizarre reason I actually liked the ending of the film, I felt it added to the ‘fantasy’ that was Bruges. Throughout the film we see Bruges mentioned as a fairytale town: quiet, peaceful and simplistic but then underneath we see murder, violence, prostitution and drugs that contradicts the whole supposed foundation that is Bruges. I expected Ray to die after we had discovered that he had killed that child, just as Harry foreshadowed his own moment of death under the same reasoning.
Exactly I just feel the ending was a bit unrealistic especially in regards to everything Ken did to help Ray. Also how the pregnant lady would not let Harry go upstairs to shoot Ray, she put her own life and the life of her unborn child’s at risk to help Ray, who she barely knew.
I was also completely depressed by the ending; I hate it when the good characters die. And for some reason, I find it really hard to believe that Ken was so selfless that he would throw himself off the tower to save Ray. I guess they had a special relationship because the way that Ken was a mentor to Ray is usually the case for those people who see a part of themselves in a younger person.