So many actors, so little interest.

Stand Up Guys follows a day in the life of aging mobsters Val (Al Pacino) and Doc (Christopher Walken), specifically the day after Val’s released from a 28-year stint in prison. Val’s eager to catch up on all the vices he’s been deprived of for the past nigh-30 years while Doc has until 10:00 am the next day to kill him. Add to that the inclusion of their old driver Richard (Alan Arkin), and you pretty much have the movie right there.

The idea is that much of the humor comes from the fact that they’re older guys living it up like the old days (which they note roughly several thousand times), but their conversations and adventures are so one-note and cliched that the old days must have been exceedingly dull. For example, the first 20 minutes has Val and Doc hitting up a bar. Val hits on a group of college girls and one of them throws a drink in his face. Fair enough reaction.

If it weren’t for the fact that writer/director Martin McDonagh is every bit as handsome as his favorite leading man, you’d think he was going down the Woody Allen vanity route, casting Colin Farrell as his obvious surrogate—a screenwriter named Marty M—in his second feature film, Seven Psychopaths. Fellow Irishman Farrell was also the star of McDonagh’s 2008 sleeper hit In Bruges, which also wove its story around a band of incompetent low-level criminals who accidentally get into the crosshairs of a big time criminal sociopath, played very winningly in that first film by a rewardingly cast-against-type Hugh Grant.

The tone of Psychopaths feels very much the same as Bruges in that Farrell again plays a likable fuck-up (this time an alcoholic screenwriter who is finding it hard to produce a follow-up to his first success) whose loser friend Billy (Sam Rockwell, playing very much TO type here) makes his living through a sloppy dog kidnapping operation that he runs with his mysterious elderly pal Hans (Christopher Walken). Unfortunately, Billy nabs a cute little Shih Tzu who happens to be the darling of his owner, mafia overlord Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson), and thus begins the chase. A shaggy dog story, indeed.

If you are one of the people who have not been exposed to the splendor that is In Bruges you really ought to do yourself a favor and seek it out post-haste. It has an energy about it that is hard to describe, and until you have seen it you really wont get as excited about Seven Psychopaths as you should be.

Director Martin McDonagh as teamed once again with Collin Ferrell for his next feature, and while the standard trailer does show promise, it is the red band trailer that really cements this as a must see. For those of you new to this project, here is the synopsis:

Written and Directed by Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh , the comedy “Seven Psychopaths” follows a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) kidnap a gangster’s (Woody Harrelson) beloved Shih Tzu.

Everything about the film feels right, from the paring of Farrell with Walken & Rockwell, to Tom Waits with a fluffy white bunny rabbit. Seven Psychopaths just might be a worthwhile successor to one of the surprise best films of 2008.

Check out the full trailer after the jump.

This week’s pick is Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999), a newer take on Washington Irving’s legendary 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Johnny Depp stars as Ichabod Crane, a New York City police constable who is sent to the quaint upstate village that is the sight of several grizzly decapitations.

Crane believes in science and deductive reasoning, where as the local inhabitants of the sleepy little hamlet attribute the murders to the slain ghost of a Hessian mercenary killed during the American Revolution.

Crane believes that the killer is flesh and blood, and not a demonic spirit as told to him by the town’s elders. Using his powers of deduction and a bag of scientific/forensic tools to discover traces which will lead him to the killer, Crane is about to discover that in the age of reason, there are still many things that are beyond comprehension in the world of Tim Burton.

This week’s pick pits a small group of international mercenaries sent by a British corporation to overthrow a two bit Idi Amin dictator in Sub Saharan Africa. John Irvin (Hamburger Hill, When Trumpets Fade) directs The Dogs of War (1980) which was based on the best selling novel from acclaimed author Frederick Forsyth (Day of the Jackal).

Christopher Walken stars as Jamie Shannon, an ex-soldier who hires himself out to the highest bidder whether its toppling a regime change in Central America, or putting a puppet government in power in the fictitious African country of Zangaro. Rounding out the cast is Tom Berenger (Drew Blakeley), Colin Blakely (Alan North), Paul Freeman (Derek Goodwin), Hugh Millais (Roy Endean), JoBeth Williams (Jessie Shannon), Winston Ntshona (Dr. Okoye), and Ed O’ Neill (Terry).

The film opens up in war torn Central America circa 1980 as the mercenary group is trying to make a hasty exit aboard a government plane as bullets and explosions are happening all around them. Shannon and his men push their way on board and force the plane into the air as soon as possible. Just within these few short minutes, you clearly can tell what their profession is and that they are not there working for the Peace Corp or distributing bibles for that matter. In this scene, a Central American army officer notices that one of the mercs is dead and demands that he give up his seat.

Drew (Berenger) pulls the pin out of a grenade and puts it in the palm of his dead comrade and tells the soldier “he’s alive you pimp.” Walken then barks, “he’s alive and he goes with me.” Derek (Freeman) looks towards the camera and with a knife he yells at the pilots “lets see this thing fly.” One of the best opening scenes of any action or war film ever. These are professionals you don’t want to mess with.