There are precious few good movies about making movies  Tropic Thunder is uproariously funny, a brutal send up of dozens of Hollywood tropes, which get a less raucous going over in Get Shorty.  The Player reveals a Hollywood machinery that routinizes art, creating a war of sorts between the suits (Tim Robbins) and the creativity.  A Cock and Bull Story and Adaptation are examples closer to Seven Psychopaths, in that you don’t necessarily know where the movie and the “movie in a movie” begins and ends.

Writer/director Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges was a surprising dark comedy about the philosophical doubts of hitmen as they tracked each other in the beautiful Belgian city.  In  Bruges marked McDonagh as a Quentin Taranatino disciple, but his dialogue was meatier, more complex and less reliant on pop culture diversions.

In Seven Psychopaths, the setting is LA, where McDonagh veers deeper into Tarantino-country.  His characters, however, retain the penchant for discussing deep moral and meditative matters as they negotiate an increasingly circuitous plot.  An actor (Sam Rockwell) tries to motivate his screenwriter friend (Colin Farrell) who is listlessly working on a script entitled “Seven Psychopaths.”  Farrell, despondent over the exploitative, repetive crap of violent pictures, has taken to drink at the thought of writing another.  Rockwell, however, is a proponent of the genre Ferrell seeks to escape, creatively urging a shoot ’em up with a blazing guns finale.  To that end, he puts out an ad in the “LA Weekly” inviting real psycopaths to come see Farrell and provide their stories.  Concurrently, Rockwell and an older gentleman (Christopher Walken) run a scam where they steal dogs and return them for rewards.  When they steal the beloved shih tzu of a real psycopath (Woody Harrelson). the script and reality meld.

I first took note of Sam Rockwell in Galaxy Quest, a very funny ensemble comedy which he completely stole.  He has the face of a supporting player, not quite Steve Buscemi odd, but one is often reminded of a rat gnawing on cheese.  Looks aside, which probably deny him leading status, Rockwell is a kinetic yet soulful actor, either riffing or expressing a heartfelt need to be understood.  Walken brings his trademark quirkiness, Harrelson his jovial menace, and Farrell, playing the straight man, his increasing frustration.  But the movie belongs to Rockwell, who blends psychoses with the LA surface cool of an aspiring actor/writer.  His performance is hilarious.

The preview portrays  the film as zanier than it really is.  There are a bunch of funny set-ups and coincidences, but McDonagh provides a sharp commentary on movies and contemporary LA.  He has also written some clever scenes where the characters toss around their screenplay ideas and in the process, write the movie before our eyes.  It’s a neat, meticulous trick.

If there is a weakness, it is the part of the film where the characters appear to suffer writer’s block, and in response, run off to Joshua Tree National Park to reflect (Walken takes peyote). The movie drags a bit at this point, but not for long.

Richard Linklater offers the story of Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), a gay mortician who companions a significantly older woman, Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) and then, in a fit of rage and exasperation at her domineering ways,  shoots her in the back and stuffs her in a freezer, pretending she is still alive (not ala’ Norman Bates).  Tiede is the town Robin Hood, the town being Carthage, Texas, and in many ways, Carthage is the star of the film.  Linklater uses very few professional actors, instead interspersing the dramatic narrative with interviews of real-life Carthage citizens, almost all of whom are squarely on the side of Tiede, and almost all of whom are hilarious.  To them, Nugent was a nasty, wicked old wretch and Bernie Tiede was the man who bought you a nice gift, sang the beautiful song that escorted a loved one to the hereafter, directed the town play or just gave you a nice wave everyday.  And he was driven to it.

Of course, in the presentation, Linklater neglects a few ugly details of the real life Tiede (not all of the vast sums he spent of Nugent’s wealth went to charity), but it appears the basic premise is true – Tiede was well-loved and Nugent well-hated (her own nephew observed, “‘Bernie’s not the first one who thought about killing her.  He’s just the first one who went through with it”).

Black is mesmerizing as Tiede, hilarious, hapless and harried, but uncontainably sweet and just a  little guilty (even before the murder).  MacLaine is effective as an old witch and Matthew McConaghey is amusing as the dogged D.A.  But the stars are the real people of Carthage, who Linklater neither mocks or mythologizes, wisely letting them be.

My only criticism is the choice to make Tiede so sympathetic.  Black does a great job in keeping him from being saccharine, with occasional flashes of guilty pleasure at his newly found wealth, but Linklater keeps away from any real dark heart, opting for a feel-good film.  Which is fine, but I think it could have remained feel-good and still been a little more revealing.