A Hollywood screenwriter with crippling creative block finds inspiration in the most unlikely places in Martin McDonagh’s twisted black comedy that builds on the promise of In Bruges.

Like that impressive 2008 debut, Seven Psychopaths balances giggles, gore and giddiness, spattering the screen with lashings of crimson blood. Most scenes of carnage unfold in flashback as figments of the lead character’s febrile imagination: a vengeful father slits his throat with a razor, a monk torches himself to make a political statement.

London-born writer-director McDonagh isn’t afraid to sacrificehis likeable creations, and he pokes glorious fun at the film industry when his hard-drinking hero suggests a spot of animal cruelty in his script.

“You can't let the animals die in a movie. Just the women,” observes his best friend, tongue wedged firmly in cheek.

The paucity of detailed female protagonists in McDonagh’s film suggests that this might not be a joke after all.

Booze-swilling Irish scribe Marty (Colin Farrell) has reached an impasse with a script called Seven Psychopaths, much to the chagrin of long-suffering girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish). “I got the title – I just haven’t been able to come up with all the psychopaths yet,” Marty tells best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), a jobbing actor who is involved in a dog-napping scam with elderly associate Hans (Christopher Walken).

Billy places a newspaper advert asking bona fide psychopaths to share their life stories with Marty, and mad man Zachariah (Tom Waits) answers. In return for sharing his grisly past, Zachariah asks Marty to include a message to his accomplice during the film’s credits, jesting that he will kill the screenwriter if the declaration is cut.

Meanwhile, Billy and Hans kidnap a shih-tzu called Bonny, unaware the pooch is the pride and joy of sadistic gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson).

Seven Psychopaths falls short of In Bruges but is nevertheless an entertaining ensemble piece, which aims a shotgun squarely between the eyes of political correctness.

Farrell is somewhat bland but Walken, Rockwell and Harrelson savour their colourful supporting characters, whose fates become inextricably entwined in the desert.

McDonagh’s typically delicious cocktail of macabre humour and sickening violence would go down a treat with hard-drinking Marty. “The Spanish got bullfighting, the French got cheese and the Irish got alcoholism,” remarks Billy. Cheers to that...

FOUR STARS