Having finally gotten around to watching this movie (and being a big fan of In Bruges, which also took me a while to finally sit down and watch), I've got to say I'm a huge fan.
I think the point that goaheadandshootme434 is trying to make is that the *actual* seventh psychopath (not the specific seven who were listed in the movie, which counts Billy twice) is Marty himself.
Psychopaths are not necessarily defined by being killers, although this movie does make a focus on homicidal psychopathic behavior.
Marty himself does exhibit some traits of a psychopathic personality disorder, including (and blatantly taken from Wikipedia):
antisocial behavior, e.g.
he drinks, alone, a lot;
he distances himself from his friends and loved ones, in that Billy (his presumably closest friend) doesn't feel that he cares about him and he is seemingly at odds with his girlfriend;
he is a lonely writer both at the beginning and end of the film, to the point where at the end he doesn't even care about his own life
diminished empathy/remorse, e.g.
he doesn't seem too upset by any of the deaths that occur
he doesn't care that his friend is a criminal, a psychopath and eventually a killer
dis-inhibited/bold behavior, e.g.
staying in the company of murderers
taking a mafia member to the hospital
*edit: He is also a compulsive liar, given by stealing Billy's "story" about Hans.
I'm sure there are other examples.
Finally, as to him being the "Buddhist psychopath", the real point in this is that he has a very Buddhist mentality. He wants to be peaceful, never picks up a gun, and even puts himself in the face of death in order to not let someone die. He is at the very least a pacifist, and whether or not McDonagh intends for the viewer to see him as the seventh psychopath or the Buddhist psychopath, he does embody the traits of both.
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spanny1
11 years ago
Hi Dr. Scogin, thanks for jumping in here to elaborate on what goaheadandshootme434 was trying so say. Let me also congratulate you on your taste in movies. In Bruges is a little masterpiece, imo. I rated In Bruges as 10/10 stars. And I think Seven Psychopaths is very good too. I rated it 8/10.
I agree Marty seemed somewhat antisocial sometimes. And I understand how you could characterize Marty as being something of a pacifist. So you could argue that Marty was a "Buddhist psychopath", and I think I can understand what you are trying to say. But I think you are stretching the meaning of those terms too far.
I would not choose to describe Marty as a psychopath. Especially not in the manner that the term "psychopath" was used in this movie. The psychos in Seven Psychopaths are all killers, multiple murderers. Most of them are vicious cold-blooded serial killers. There was no evidence in the movie that Marty was a psychopath in this sense. Similarly, I would not describe Marty as a Buddhist or even a pacifist. Marty was merely normal, or mainly normal, in a story surrounded by other very extreme insane characters, true psychos. Would a real pacifist be writing such a violent and virulent script about psycho killers? Would a pacifist be so interested in murderers and killing? Sure Marty drank and spent a lot of time alone, but only when he was writing, and isn't that what all writers do?
I thought that maybe the movie was heading to a final plot twist in which Marty would be revealed as the 7th psycho. That seemed a neat idea, and a natural way to wrap up the narrative, but a little obvious too. But I really do not think the script was trying to say or imply that Marty was a psycho, and a killer. I just do not see the evidence for that interpretation in the film as presented.
Maybe Marty would become a psycho later, after writing all the psycho material for his script, and studying psychos, and hanging out with so many big time psychos for the whole of the story. Maybe Marty would become a psycho in the sequel, to be called Eight Psychopaths. :-)
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PhoenixPhuck
10 years ago
The movie itself turns Marty into a psychopath, as evidenced by his conversation with Zachariah at the end.
"You sound different"
Even the most primitive society has an innate respect for the insane.
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spanny1
10 years ago
I agree the whole movie seemed to be grooming Marty into becoming a psychopath, after his experiences in the movie, hanging out with Billy and the other psycho killers. Maybe Marty graduated into a full-blown psycho himself later.
But strictly speaking, Marty was not identified as a psycho by the end of the movie, nor did Marty actually kill anybody in the movie. I do not see any concrete evidence for that interpretation in the film as presented. So I think the movie leaves Marty's fate a bit ambiguous by the end. Sure, Marty was changed by his extreme experiences in this movie, and maybe he was changed into a psycho. But he might also have been very repelled by the killing he witnessed, and changed into a better person. I'm just not sure the movie spells it out either way.
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normkerr123
10 years ago
the movie was so filled with little send ups that I was not at all surprised to find at the end that there weren't even 7 of them, in spite of the title (or, maybe more accurately, BECAUSE of the title). I mean, who says the title has to be numerically correct for a movie?
Remember how you felt when you realized the narrator was completely untrustworthy at the end of The Usual Suspects? It is a misdirect used to surprise, delight and entertain (or to annoy if taken too literally, or handled clumsily).
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spanny1
10 years ago
I totally agree with you. The fact that a movie entitled Seven Psychopaths only listed 6 actual different psychopaths is a little joke. Or sort of a plot twist, as other posters indicated earlier in this thread. I'm sure the filmmaker can count to seven, so when Billy is counted twice in the list of psychos, it is a deliberate little plot surprise on the part of the scriptwriter.
Billy is such a true, dedicated death-dealing killer that it even seems fitting that Billy counts as 2 psychos on the official list.
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