When I was driving to the theater, I was doubting my choice in Seven Psychopaths, because the trailer made it seem like so many films I'd seen before that looked edgy and wry, and showed so much promise in the previews yet fell short because of flat characters and muddled plots. This one, however, did not let me down.

I suggest that you see this film purely because it tries to do more with a movie than anything you've seen in a while, and it manages to actually succeeds on all levels, while dangerously romancing the clichés of toying with clichés, movies about writing movies, and gangsters with a soft side. Every time the story started to get even a little generic, wild cards came firing in from all sides.

The actors played their parts well, but Rockwell gave the best performance. I was impressed by Woody and Walken's abilities to shed their skins and get deeper into character than I've seen them be in years.

This is a writer's film--the subplots (really, borderline vignettes) about the various psychopaths that Marty encounters are well done, their back stories unfold at different paces, and their details that connect them to the central plot are creatively deployed, while the momentum of the film clearly hinges in the here and now and does not make the mistake of merely chaining together several subplots to produce one "dog" of a story.

I enjoyed almost everything about Seven Psychopaths. 10/10 to offset the 2 that someone without a brain will rate this.