Rating (3 out of 5)

Plot: The main character, Marty (played by Colin Farrell) has to write a script, which he only has a title, Seven Pyschopaths.  His friend, Billy (played by Sam Rockwell), kidnaps dogs for a living with his partner Hans (played by Christopher Walkern) and wants to help write the script with Mary.

Now throughout the story are little substories.  The substories reveal a little about the seven different psychopaths.  Some of the stories are about real people, and others are characters for the movie.

What I Liked:  The substories are interesting and you want to see more about them.  The whole movie starts off with a bang, about two hitmen talking about shooting out eyeballs, and they are shoot by someone, who is labeled as Psychopath No. 1.  This was how quite a few of the stories went along.

The idea of interviewing people and getting their psychopath stories does seem intriguing.  Tom Waits does a great job as the psychopath he interviews.  Actually, if they had concentrated on 3 of the stories, a sort of Pulp Fiction type, I think the movie would have been better.

 

What I Didn’t Like:   While the substories were all very interesting, it seemed to take away from the trajectory of the whole movie.  Never felt on a path with any of the characters.  Also, never really sympathized with any of the characters.  Also, with jumping around quite a bit, it felt like more rambling than a whole story.

I didn’t understand the connection between the 3 main characters.  Billy was the connecting point, but he didn’t seem to be all there.  Marty and Billy didn’t seem to mesh well in any of the scenes, so I wasn’t quite sure why they were friends.  Only after Marty reads Billy’s diary that he seems to be nice to him.  Even then the diary was of a mad man, not someone you would want to be friends with.  So for me, this made it hard to understand why Marty went to such lengths to support Billy.

This movie felt like it was trying to be the next Pulp Fiction or Snatch, but misses the mark.  There are entertaining scenes and sub stories but fails as an overall movie.