2. Ray - In Bruges
Focus FeaturesNo one writes a witty suicidal quite like Martin McDonagh. The Irish-born playwright and filmmaker has made a career out of defying his audience's tonal expectations. In Bruges flips back and forth between dark comedy and bleak drama at an alarming rate, and no character weathers the storm quite as well as Colin Farrell's hitman with a heart of gold, Ray. On his first job in London, Ray is tasked with killing a priest, and inadvertently shoots a little boy through the head during the hit. Wracked with guilt, he is forced to hide out in the Belgian town of Bruges, where he confronts both his growing depression and his frustration with tourism. Not only that, his boss (Harry, a man of a very strict ethical code) is intent on killing him for the job he botched. Ray is crass, rude, and suicidal, but somehow Colin Farrell's performance and Martin McDonagh's script make the character extremely pitiable. Ray is the closest cinema will ever come to a sympathetic child killer. He did not mean to shoot the child, and it is clear throughout the course of the film how much this crime is weighing on his soul. Because of this, every crass joke he makes becomes not a negative aspect of his character, but a very honest way to escape from his own guilt and crushing grief. Especially since he's trapped in his own personal purgatory In F*cking Bruges.