Watched on Netflix

Actually, Martin McDonagh could have hung up his career after the overwhelming masterpiece "In Bruges" (fortunately he didn't), because topping this pretended quality once again is almost impossible, which is also proven by his hotly anticipated second feature film "Seven Psychopaths". If you take a closer look at his crook posse, you quickly realise that McDonagh has staged the exact opposite of his brilliant first film here. While the melancholic gangster ballad "In Bruges" continues to unfold with each rewatch and gets to the root of every emotional undertone, "Seven Psychopaths" is pure, fast-moving entertainment cinema that also works with the humanisation of the world of criminals again, but doesn't even begin to reach the class of one of its predecessors.

Colin Farrell is once again involved, this time as a scriptwriter who is in the midst of a creative crisis and has thus pulled the ass card³. He was born into alcoholism due to his Irish descent, and he also chose the job of a writer, so it's no wonder that he can be found most of the time with a beer or bourbon in his hand and a desperate expression on his face. It must be said, however, that Farrell is the least interesting character in the ensemble and mercilessly loses out to his dazzling colleagues like Sam Rockwell or Christopher Walken.

In terms of its staging effect, "Seven Psychopaths" could be compared to a New Year's Eve rocket: it ignites only once, entertains, the sparkling and flashing is quite enjoyable to watch for the moment, but the bang is fired right at the beginning, which only underlines once again that this sight is an immensely long-established one. If you then turn around on New Year's Eve and look at the whole sky, you realise that countless such rockets have made it up into the air and all that remains in the end are a few nice minutes that you quickly leave behind because nothing really lasting was offered. Fortunately, Martin McDonagh's Oscar-winning "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" proved that he still has plenty of creative explosive power in his creative quiver.

Certainly, McDonagh's aegis does stand out from the swamp of gangster platitudes, "Seven Psychopaths" is by no means bad, and the genre set pieces are at times skilfully and wittily reflected on the meta-level, but new facets cannot be found, McDonagh reveals himself not least as a freeloader who plagiarises more than proving originality: Psychopathic characters off the rails, men with rabbits, men crying because they miss their puppy, men finding the perfect spot for a real showdown and men making an existential rule for writing a screenplay: Women are welcome to die, but animals never do. Remember that!

Unlike his first and third film, I don't want to give this one a round of applause; the film is simply too simplistic and too self-absorbed in its stringing together of genre set pieces.