Ranking Colin Farrell's 10 Best Movie Performances

While Farrell’s latest collaboration with Martin McDonagh looks most likely to net him major awards, their 2008 cult classic remains the finest work of the actor’s career. His turn as troubled hitman Ray isn’t a mile off from his Banshees performance, but it’s more subtle, varied, and human than he’s ever been on film.

The movie sees the Farrell/Brendan Gleeson partnership in its first iteration, here as assassins sent to Belgium after a bungled job. The dynamic is familiar, Gleeson the older, weary man to Farrell’s childlike buffoon.

Ray, though, is no fool, and Farrell’s performance gradually peels away layers to depict a young life replete with remorse, regret, and hope for redemption. He acts the clown and winds up his minder, Gleeson’s Ken, but the whole thing is a smokescreen. Ray has been sent to Bruges after making a big mistake, one he’s not sure he can live with, and over the course of the film we see him come to terms with that.

This being a McDonagh script, it’s awash with great dialogue, and perhaps for the first time in his career Farrell got to illustrate how deft and witty a performer he can be. For all the sorrow of the movie, it was a hell of a rebirth for the actor.