Seven Psychopaths

Out Now On-Demand

They won't take any Shih Tzu.

From the writer and director of In Bruges comes this Los Angeles-set crime comedy involving a screenwriter, the gangster underworld and one mobster's beloved Shih Tzu. Stars Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken.

Marty (Farrell) is a struggling writer who dreams of finishing his screenplay, Seven Psychopaths. All he needs is a little focus and inspiration. Billy (Rockwell) is Marty's best friend, an unemployed actor and part time dog thief, who will help Marty by any means necessary. Hans (Walken) is Billy's partner in crime, a religious man with a violent past. Charlie (Harrelson) is the unpredictable, psycho-pathetic gangster whose beloved dog Billy and Hans have just stolen. Marty is going to get all the focus and inspiration he needs, presuming he lives to tell the tale.



Midnight Madness, Audience Award winner at Toronto Film Festival 2012

Directed by

Written by

Comedy, Drama, Thriller


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


Official Site

Following up on his stupendous feature debut In Bruges, writer-director Martin McDonagh attempts to merge Pulp Fiction with Adaptation in Seven Psychopaths. As awesome as that sounds, the schizophrenic script will hold you back from falling in love with it.

McDonagh once again makes great use of Colin Farrell as Marty, a struggling Irish scriptwriter caught up in a chaotic chain of events. This unwanted life-or-death situation acts as the muse he needs to rid himself of writer’s block, introducing him to characters he can adopt into his screenplay.

Woody Harrelson does subdued craziness well as the ruthless killer whose heart bleeds for his beloved Shih Tzu; Christopher Walken ups the comedic ante well above his usual shtick as the scene-stealing wise old psycho with a hilariously OTT backstory; Sam Rockwell cuts the written lines of verbal diamonds his gunfight-craving basket case has been given (brilliantly outlining a fallacy in a Gandhi proverb in one scene).

Unfortunately, Marty’s inability to choose what kind of story to tell seems reflective of McDonagh’s own inability to pick a consistent direction with Seven Psychopaths. Sometimes, it’s a simple character-driven comedy. Sometimes, it’ll shift gear to being something more intimate. Sometimes, it’ll hint at breaking the fourth wall. McDonagh’s film changes its mind as often as Marty does, and perhaps that’s the point. However, it still left me with a floating sense of vacantness.

There are plenty of cinematic gold nuggets to mine from Seven Psychopaths but it just feels a little overcooked. Though like the characters it portrays, while it may be imbalanced and flawed, the film proves funny and extremely likeable.

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert)


Well, they have the title right.

Empire (UK)



Guardian (UK)


After a while the narrative falters, the ideas flag and it simply gets dull.

Hollywood Reporter



Little White Lies (UK)


Hilarious, unwieldy, clever, snarky and snide it may be, but it's always entertaining.

Los Angeles Times


A collection of weird riffs that not even engaging acting by Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken and Tom Waits can bring together.

New York Times


Meta to the max, filled with clever jokes and observations that stick like barbs and deflated ones that land with a thud.

Total Film (UK)


Engagingly off-centre, like Charlie Kaufman taking down Quentin Tarantino... often closer to chaos than it is to genius.

Variety (USA)


Arm-wrestles the split between shlock and sincerity...

Seen Them All

I love Colin Farrell and Christopher Walken, I also loved the movie In Bruges, so I knew I would like this movie from the get-go. A wacky hit-em-up movie, with lots of laughs and black humour. No one does black humour better than Colin Farrell, his facial expressions and the way he says certain lines are mint (The best humour is Irish, even when they're being serious).

If your choice of movie is generally in the lines of Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice or any Rom Com then this movie is not for you. Not for the faint hearted.

Seven Psychopaths

Seven Psychopaths is awesome. I love this movie. I would even say that it's even better than director Martin McDonagh's previous film, In Bruges. Every performance is hilarious. Colin Farrell is superb as always. Sam Rockwell is funny as hell as Billy, best friends with Marty, played by Colin Farrell, a screenwriter writing a script for a new crime film called Seven Psychopaths. Christopher Walken and Woody Harrelson are at their best. Walken playing Hans, working with Billy in a dog-napping business, stealing people's dogs and returning them for a cash reward. Harrelson playing Charlie, a gangster who's Shih Tzu is stolen by Billy and Hans. You can smell meta all over this mash between a Tarantino and Coen brothers movie. A movie that's aware it's a movie. Lines like "That was the worst shootout ever". Whats really amazing about Seven Psychopaths is that there's so many twists, subplots and characters, and somehow it completely avoids being convoluted like most other movies would be. The story starts to fall apart near the end, but I was entertained the whole way through and constantly laughing. Seven Psychopaths is a bloody good time.

Seventh Heaven

'Seven Psychopaths' is writer/director Martin McDonagh's follow-up to the wonderfully dark, twisted comedy 'In Bruges' - and it doesn't disappoint. But I'd stop reading this review if meta-movie playfulness drives you nuts and has you spitting popcorn and screaming "Pretentious bashturds!" at the screen. This is movie-making about movie-making akin to Charlie Kaufman's 'Adaptation' or the Coen brothers' 'Barton Fink' - only far less po-faced.

Sam Rockwell's Billy is an LA lowlife who, along with old-timer Hans (the ever-wonderful Chris Walken) kidnaps rich people's dogs and then returns them to collect the reward from their grateful owners. Only Billy and Hans make the mistake of dog-napping the beloved pooch of sociopathic Charlie (Woody Harrelson at his over-the-top best) and - that's it. Some won't like the dark humour and the sudden mid-movie mood swing that wrenches a tragic twist in the tale, skewing the comedy into a desert-set existential road-movie, but personally? I loved it. But then I'm a sucker for bleak existential comedies - especially if they star Chris Walken, who frankly I'd enjoy watching read the telephone directory out loud whilst taking a crap. The guy oozes charisma and star quality. When one of Woody Harrelson's hoods demands that Walken put his hands up, Walken simply refuses. "No" he drawls "Why should I? I don't want to."

Mixed up in his friends dognapping scam is Colin Farrell's Marty, a screenwriter (um, 'Marty', like writer/director Marty McDonagh... geddit?) struggling to write a script. Early on in the movie Marty is asked by Billy how his screenplay for 'Seven Psychopaths' is coming. Marty replies: "Slow. I've got the title... just haven't been able to come up with all the psychopaths yet." When Billy asks just how many psycho's he's got, Marty tells him: "One. And he ain't really much of a psychopath. He's more of a... Buddhist...I'm sick of all these stereotypical Hollywood murderer scumbag type psychopath movies. I don't want it to be one more film about guys with guns in their hands. I want it, overall, to be about love - and peace. But it still has to be about these seven psychopaths, so this Buddhist psychopath, he doesn't believe in violence. I don't know what the fock he's going to do in the movie..."

And there's the movie in a nutshell. A comedic ensemble caper comedy that contemplates violence and movies, comically... not to mention violently. Violently comically. Um... yeah. It's a boys own caper, sort of 'Oceans 11' for hipsters - with an Uber-cool cast, featuring alongside Walken, Farrell, Rockwell, Harrelson the likes of Tom Waites as the rabbit-loving killer, Zachariah. Think Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' with dialogue by Woody Allen, because McDonagh's script snaps crackles and pops with comedic dialogue. Remember Woody Allen's 'Play It Again Sam'? Hitting on a girl in an art gallery, Woody asks: "What are you doing Saturday night?" She replies bleakly: "Committing suicide." Quick as a flash, Woody responds: "What about Friday?" In 'Seven Psychopaths' when Zach tells Marty he's going to kill him Tuesday, Marty replies bleakly: "That's good, I'm not doing anything Tuesday."

So, if you're free Tuesday, or any other night, and fancy some meta-movie existential comedic violence, you should check out 'Seven Psychopaths.' The mix of comedy, drama, melancholy, violence and meditation doesn't always work and certainly isn't for all tastes, but if you like watching great actors having a ball with a script that dares to be different, then it's a heck of a lot of fun.





Perhaps not my style, interesting acting and storytelling, but I came away underwhelmed.




Absurd, graphic, ludicrous ... and oh so entertaining !

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS is an unpredictable, funny, occasionally faltering but regularly excellent piece of cinema.

Some may call it messy, all over the place ... I guess it is, and deliberately so, just as the protagonists themselves. It's weird and fun and sad and gross and clever and definitely very entertainig while being full of messages on a wide variety of subjects . Go see it, it's good.

1st and 7th Psychopath

Seven Psychopaths

Very british comedy by the guy that wrote and directed 'In Bruges', so this is similar to that of course. Think of 'Bandits', 'The Mexican', 'Get Shorty' with of splashs of 'Pulp Fiction' an 'Kalifornia'. The acting is superb by pure professionals which means if your not LOL then its emotional and your empathising with the characters. Really liked Rockwell, Walken an Farrell in this piece an I felt their characters work really well with their own personas. Funny, straight and kinda straight up life acting, even akward in parts.

Genre : action, comedy

4/5 : great well writen/directed film, you just have to watch the very end (little extra after couple credits), great stuff.

Seven Psychopaths: Oh So Meta

For those who enjoyed Martin McDonagh's excellent debut feature 'In Bruges', there's much to revel in the madness of such material in 'Seven Psychopaths' which unfortunately leads to more misses than hits.

Featuring a stellar cast headed by Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson and the indelible pair of Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Waits, there's much to like on paper. However, the uneven keel of the plot kinda registered a "meh" reaction.

Farrell (who provides better performances as a character actor rather than a leading man) plays an Irish screenwriter who can only muster a title for his screenplay - 'Seven Psychopaths'. However, his writer's block is cured with absolute wild inspiration by his actor friend (Rockwell, who is consistently great and hilarious as ever). The pair's inspired outrageous schemes accompanied by Walken lead them into trouble with ruthless and mean-spirited gangster (played with the usual Harrelson shtick).

There have been notable comparisons between the work of Quentin Tarantino and McDonagh's work here which are valid. However, McDonagh falls short of making his material come alive together seamlessly, something which Tarantino has mastered with elegance and purpose.

There's no doubt McDonagh loves his characters given their shameless and somewhat likeable appeal. However, McDonagh provides a misguided hand with his meta-fiction approach to his storytelling which is reflective of Farrell's character and his writer's block. There's a feeling of "lets throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" which yes, allows for some great performances from the cast. But ultimately that is all there is to like.




Proper Good

This freaked me out how good it was. Rockwell, Walken, oh my god.