A comedy that forgot to install the funny, the Irish-gangster flick “Perrier’s Bounty” is pretty sure that if you put together gay hit men, endlessly repeated situations (people saying “tout de suite,” car wheels getting booted) and a geezer chugging instant coffee right out of the jar, people will laugh. Right?
Cillian Murphy plays a Dublin lowlife trying to round up the money he needs to repay a loan shark (Brendan Gleeson). Picking up his dad (Jim Broadbent), who is convinced that the next time he falls asleep he will die, and his suicidal neighbor (Jodie Whittaker), he careens around the city getting into a variety of unlikely situations and staying a step ahead of the bad guys. One minute a couple of burglars are offering him 10,000 euros just to help out on a job. The next, his doddering papa is pulling a gun on cops and stealing their car.
Watching this movie lunge this way and that is like being at a bar while a guy with the widest smile and the busiest gestures keeps telling you all about this fantastic Martin McDonagh play he sort of remembers, and how this happened, and then this happened, and how gruesome and crazy and sick it all was, and how you should just take his word for how funny it was.