London Fields

A pathetic attempt of a deep, interesting and artsy movie. Just awful, and I usually find some good things in bad movies. Do yourself a big favour and avoid this utter failure.

The ingredients: (1) A very bored chain smoking Billy Bob Thornton without yellow fingers. (2) The femme fatale who is consumed by all things sexual like a female cat on heat. She doesn't work, prepare food or go shopping but instead prances around all day in her underwear in her flat in case male visitors arrive. She has also been living in the neighbourhood for a year but the boys never noticed before. How come? (3) The posh gentlemen who prefers to hang around in sleazy underground bars all by himself where he has no friends and doesn't fit in. (4) The dart player scumbag who squints his eyes and pulls faces every time he speaks as if someone emptied a bottle of lemon juice in his eyes. (5) The kid in a dinosaur suit who behaves like a total gremlin and has to be stopped physically or he will eat the furniture. Where can it go to from here? Only downwards, and we didn't even get to see her boobs.

Struggling writer Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton), sleazy darts player Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess), and well dressed man Guy Clinch (Theo James) are in a dive bar when Nicola Six (Amber Heard) walks in dressed in sexy mourning. The clairvoyant femme fatale can see the deaths of people. In that moment, she realizes that she has seen her eventual murderer. She lives above Samson and is a character in the story he's writing.

It's a disjointed mess. I like a few of the surreal touches but dislike a whole lot more other ones. The Enola Gay makes Guy look stupid or is the writing stupid? Or is the writer's expectations of the audience is too low? At least, the story could be about Bockscar and Fat Man. It just makes the movie stupid overall. Next, Samson Young is an unreliable narrator. He's a sleepy unreliable creator. It makes everything in the movie unreliable. In addition, Amber Heard is nothing but sex. She's an empty character. There is no motivation. She is a figment of Samson's imagination. She is a surreal fake creation of the male libido. She's a sex robot bending to each male's fantasy. Finally, there is Jim Sturgess contorting his face unnaturally beyond camp. It's completely ridiculous. With the darts playing, it reminds me of The Big Lebowski but in a bad way. There is no loveable character. There is no fun. There is no enjoyable quirkiness. This is a mess waiting for the reveal which I don't care about with characters that are not compelling.

This film tells the story of a writer who gets inspired by her neighbour of his flat swap.

Seriously, this film is so sexually charged that it gets me uncomfortable. It basically is the vehicle to objectify Amber Heard, thereby fulfilling someone's perverted sexual fantasy. It tries a bit of noir, but it does not succeed. Instead, it is less than engaging and does not offer suspense or mystery as intended.

One of the worst movies I've ever watched. Amber Heard plays a woman who has foreseen her own murder and spends the rest of the film trying to work out who her killer will be, apparently by ... shall we say "sleeping with" .... all the possible suspects.

I am writing this while half way through it and I already want to kill her myself. She sashays and vamps around valiantly, but cannot pull off the film noir vibe. Heaven only knows what Jim Sturgess thought he was doing. I would like to say he chews up the scenery, but I doubt his crack-head yellowed teeth would be up to the job. Billy Bob Thornton is, well, Billy Bob Thornton, only sleepier than usual. The only high spots are the few appearances by Johnny Depp as a cheerfully villainous Cockney gangster, but he is uncredited in the final product. One can only presume he did not want to be associated with this abomination.

Pretentious, badly acted, boring tosh. Total waste of a good book and almost two hours of my life! Awful. Absolutely awful.