Star rating: ***
Dir: Martin McDonagh
With: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes

Playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh follows his Oscar-winning short Six Shooter with a firecracker first feature so savvy it almost makes Belgium seem cool.

Ray and Ken are two Irish hitmen sent into temporary exile in Bruges after a job in London goes wrong. Affable Ken (the always watchable Brendan Gleeson) sees the enforced mini-break as a chance to see the sights; sour Ray (Colin Farrell) simply hates the place on sight.

Farrell is an actor who needs to be approached with care. When he's good, as in Miami Vice, he's very good, but when he's bad, as in Alexander, it's best to clear the area and call 999, Actor Squad. At first, his character comes across as all sharp elbows and dull thoughts, a thug with apparently no redeeming qualities. And that's before we learn the true story of what happened in London.

Slowly, like the film in general, Ray begins to intrigue and amuse. Once writer-director McDonagh gets his game on, he shapes the tale into an audacious, funny, extremely dark and very violent caper. One of the film's many surprises is the casting of Ralph Fiennes as an Essex mob boss and all-round psycho. Fiennes, a gent simply born to play posh, slums it like a good 'un. At the centre of the mayhem, exerting his usual calming and classy influence, is Gleeson, that BFG of the Irish acting fraternity.

McDonagh goes over the top with the ending, turning the Unesco World Heritage Site into the wild, wild west, but overall In Bruges is a cleverly crafted blast of a movie from a writer clearly thrilled to be playing on the bigger stage of a film set. On the evidence of this, long may he continue.