Writer/director Martin McDonagh follows up his hitmen-on-holiday caper In Bruges with another darkly comic, dysfunctional-male buddy movie, this time set in Los Angeles. The story centres on Colin Farrell's boozy Irish screenwriter, who's struggling for ideas for his next project, "Seven Psychopaths". Inspiration soon comes calling when the dog-napping scam run by his dodgy best pal Sam Rockwell and partner Christopher Walken backfires after they swipe the prized pooch of crime boss Woody Harrelson. The conceit of having the characters muse over how Farrell's screenplay - and the film itself - should play out allows McDonagh to lampoon, challenge and subvert plenty of genre clichés (Rockwell's energetic acting out of his dream shoot-out finale, for instance, is a hoot). However, the rapid-fire script doesn't always hit its target, at times it even conforms to the very conventions it lambasts; it mocks dismissive female roles in movies, yet Gabourey Sidibe and Olga Kurylenko barely get a look-in. With its LA setting, narrative digressions and wisecrack-tempered violence, this has a certain Pulp Fiction flavour to it, and a charismatic performance by a rheumy-eyed Walken also gives it heart. Oddball cameos from Tom Waits and Harry Dean Stanton simply add to its instant cult appeal.