In Bruges/Headscratchers

• OK, I love this movie and I know the ending is a neat little contrivance that ties together a lot of the narratival and thematic strands together quite poetically. So here's my it-just-bugs-me. Ralph Fiennes's boss assassin Harry buys bullets from the dealer that are said to be able to blow someone's head off. And that's precisely what happens when he takes out the dwarf who is dressed like achild at the end of the movie, and then himself. You can see the blasted out hollow where the dwarf's skull used to be, and see a big damn explosion of Fiennes's face a moment later. But first that bullet passes through Colin Farrell's character Ray, specifically his stomach. Now, I'm no munitions expert, but wouldn't even a normally non-fatal wound basically destroy someone if it upon impact it has enough force to explode a human head? Then why do we see Farrell being lead off in an ambulance in a hazy conscious state, with the implied possibility that his sins were atoned for somehow and he might survive. I mean, it may be quite bleak and he's not expected to make it, but with a bullet that is seen to leave his torso through an exit wound and then annihilate the face of a midget after already passing through him...I mean, wouldn't he be toast?
  • It was a really tiny face.
    • Uuuummmmmm... No. No it wasn't.
    • It's good to see someone out there is doing the dwarf-head-size-research.
    • Hey, someone's got to.
  • Ray got a through and through, hitting nothing hard, and when it got to the midget's head, it hit bone and popped. You saw earlier that Harry was definitely using the Soft-tip version of the dum-dums, with greater penetration, so it is possible it coulda got through before expanding.

• It bugs me that Gleeson's character's ready to kill Ray (because "that's what i do") then, prevents Ray from killing himself and helps him escape, and then tells his boss that he can go fuck himself and he's not gonna do his job (despite having killed a handful of people before), prompting said Boss to get to Bruges himself in order to cause the Downer Ending. It'd make more sense if, for example, Ken, after putting Ray on the train, had lied to Harry, telling him he did the job, and then Harry had somehow guessed it was a lie, prompting him to get to Bruges without putting the Idiot Ball in Ken's hands.
  • I think part of it was that Ken wanted to atone for his past sins, so he was trying to pull a Death Equals Redemption. If he lied to Harry, he would have gone on killing more people. Although yeah, I think he should have at least stalled a bit to buy more time for Ray to get farther away from Bruges.
  • Ken also owes his vengeance over the death of his wife to Harry, in addition to his livelihood. Considering that Ken considers Harry to be like family, telling such a serious lie to Harry is probably out of the question for him.
• Why did they remove the flashback scene with Ken and Harry entirely? It was flawed, yes, and maybe I'm overreacting due to my being a Doctor Who fanboy, but the scene with Ken and Harry in the belltower has so much more meaning if you know that Harry avenged Ken's wife.
  • Ray still mentions that Harry avenged the wife in the racist rant scene.
  • I realize it's chronologically impossible for it to have happened, but related to this, it also bugs me that he didn't say "I decapitate people now. Decapitations are cool."
    • I have now pictured Matt Smith in his tweed jacket and bow-tie, caked in blood holding a bloody great sword. It's so wrong, yet so right.
• I don't get the significance of the diner couple being Canadian as opposed to American like Ray assumed. And how would they find him and identify him on the train going out of Bruges?
  • He could've been sighted at the station, and the driver was informed after they left? As for the Canadian thing - when the couple complained to Ray in the restaurant, Ray retaliated with a cheap shot about Vietnam (very much an American problem in most history books) and a punch, for "John Lennon, ya Yankee fuckin' cunt".