Seven Psychopaths

MPAA Rating: for strong violence, bloody images, pervasive language, sexuality/nudity and some drug use.

Moral Rating:

_____

Add to your list?
View your list

E-mail this page to a friend

Moviemaking Quality:

Primary Audience:

Adults

Genre:

Crime Comedy Drama

Length:

1 hr. 49 min.

Year of Release:

2012

USA Release:

October 12, 2012 (wide—1,475+ theaters)
DVD: January 29, 2013

Relevant Issues

kidnapping / kidnappers

illegal drug use

writing a screenplay / screenwriter

FILM VIOLENCE—How does viewing violence in movies affect families? Answer

murder

Producer’s synopsis: “From Oscar-winning writer and director Martin McDonagh comes a star-studded, blood-drenched, black comedy. Marty (Colin Farrell) is a struggling writer who dreams of finishing his screenplay Seven Psychopaths. All he needs is a little focus and inspiration.

Billy (Sam Rockwell) is Marty’s best friend, an unemployed actor and part time dog thief, who wants to help Marty by any means necessary.

Hans (Christopher Walken) is Billy’s partner in crime. A religious man with a violent past. Charlie is the psychopathetic gangster whose beloved dog, Billy and Hans have just stolen. Charlie’s unpredictable, extremely violent and wouldn’t think twice about killing anyone or anything associated with the theft. Marty is going to get all the focus and inspiration he needs, just as long as he lives to tell the tale. ”

…dark, exceedingly violent comedy… graphically gory, obstinately obscene, over-the-top satirical farce…
—Adam R. Holz, Plugged In

…This is one crazy bastard of a movie, but too many of its moments of let’s-subvert-the-genre seem to leave McDonagh stranded and flailing at just the moment when a Tarantino movie or a Chuck Palahniuk novel is snapping into place.… [2½/4]
—Kyle Smith, New York Post

…But put a gun in the hands of Woody Harrelson and some glorious gab in the mouth of Christopher Walken—the most deadpan of deadpanning thespians—and it’s impossible not to make something of this profanity-flying conflation.…
—Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

…7 psychopathically good performances… It’s the performances that hold the movie together when the crazed ambition of this enterpise threatens to pull it apart.…
—Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News

…a rambling accretion of superviolent nihilist riffs that evoke Tarantino… Some of the film is fun for moviegoers… Still, the violence wears you down. Like one of its nutso characters, “Seven Psychopaths” has a death wish.
—Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal

…this is a delightfully goofy, self-aware movie that knows it is a movie.… All of the actors are good… [3½/4]
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

…An energetically demented psycho-killer comedy set in faux-noir L.A.… McDonagh has a fine time deconstructing movie genres… [B+]
—Lisa Schwarzbaumm, Entertainment Weekly

…sporadically funny, blood-splattered comedy… Mr. McDonagh has written and directed a comedy of cruelty that’s predicated on the dubious idea that the spectacle of creative failure is comic (rather than absurd). That this is largely a lie, unless it’s Mel Brooks doing “The Producers,” should go without saying, and it’s instructive that Mr. McDonagh sells the lie slathered in blood, which suggests that there’s a great deal of boiling rage or maybe self-loathing beneath the jokes, the cake-and-eat-it-too attacks on women and movie allusions.
—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Sorry, no viewer comments received yet. If you have seen this movie and would like to share your observations and insights with others to be posted here, please contact us!