LONDON FIELDS: A Sloppy Thriller Full Of Squandered Potential

Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Martin Amis, London Fields had a long and troubled journey to the big screen. While various directors such as David Cronenberg and Michael Winterbottom were attached to the project over the years, the brave soul who finally took on the challenge was Mathew Cullen, a music video director best known for his work with Weezer and Katy Perry. Kind of an odd choice to take on an infamously complex crime thriller, but his resume certainly boasted the visual swag to bring Amis’ tortured version of 1999 London to life.

London Fields was scheduled to screen at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, but the film was pulled from the lineup after Cullen sued the producers for, among other things, taking away his right to final cut. The producers countered by saying that Cullen failed to deliver his cut of the film before multiple deadlines; they also filed another lawsuit against star Amber Heard, claiming that she failed to fulfill her own contractual obligations. To make an unnecessarily long story short, the lawsuits have been settled, and three years later, the film is finally being released. But…is it any good?

Mystery Girl

I’m afraid the answer is a resounding no. London Fields sets up an intriguing premise – a young woman knows when and where she will die, and that it’s going to be one of three men she just met who commits the crime – but fails to deliver on almost every count. The script by Roberta Hanley is a tangled mess, the majority of the performances from the talented ensemble cast are shockingly wooden, and the noir-tinged production design, which should have been the film’s strength, looks as though it were haphazardly slapped together by a group of high school theater technicians.

The film opens as Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton), an American novelist suffering from both writer’s block and a terminal illness, arrives in London to do a house swap with famed English writer Mark Asprey (Jason Isaacs). London is not the thriving metropolis that we know today, but a city in crisis, devolving into a mire of decadence and deviousness under the threat of impending nuclear war. Sam is picked up at Heathrow Airport by Keith Talent (Jim Sturgess, chewing the scenery so hard it’s a shock his jaw doesn’t fall off), a debt-riddled darts player, who takes Sam to the local pub. There, Sam meets Guy Clinch (Theo James), a posh banker who escapes from his bland life with his wife and tiny terrorist of a son by hobnobbing with Keith and his gang of miscreants.

All three men are stopped in their tracks when a beautiful woman in a black veil enters the bar: Nicola Six (Heard), a mysterious femme fatale who happens to live in the flat above where Sam is staying. After watching Nicola dramatically throw away her diaries, Sam seizes them in order to learn more about her. He discovers that Nicola claims to know how everyone will die, including herself. She’s doomed to die shortly after midnight on her 30th birthday, in the street outside her flat. Not only that, she knows that her killer is one of the three men she met in the pub that day – Keith, Guy, or even Sam himself.

Sam asks Nicola if he can observe her life and impending death to add some authenticity to his latest novel. She agrees, and before long Sam finds himself utterly entangled in the web Nicola is weaving for the men around her. To Guy, Nicola pretends to be a virginal angel who desperately needs him to help her pay off the warlords that are holding her (imaginary) childhood friend captive. To Keith, she pretends to be a wealthy seductress who then uses the money she obtains from Guy to pay off Keith’s debts to fellow darts player and gangster Chick Purchase (Johnny Depp).

With the way Nicola treats them, one begins to understand why one of these men becomes furious enough to murder her. But really, none of the characters in London Fields have enough redeemable qualities for the audience to care whether they live or die.

Dames and Darts

So, what works in London Fields? Well, Heard is great in the lead role, even if Nicola is so enigmatic that it’s hard to be invested in her and her gruesome fate. (Sam occasionally muses about the importance of not writing Nicola as a one-dimensional character, a bit of irony that fails to stick the landing.) An old-fashioned beauty who looks as though she was pulled straight from another, better noir, Heard embraces the role of the stereotypical femme fatale with gusto. Watching her toy with the hapless Guy and Keith, seamlessly transitioning from innocent to vampy at the drop of a hat, is hilarious. I just wish we knew more about what was going on in Nicola’s pretty head behind her carefully curated facade.

Speaking of which: thanks to costume designer Susie Coulthard, Heard looks absolutely stunning in every miraculous ensemble she wears in London Fields, from her little black funeral dress and veil to a shiny red vinyl trench coat and matching shoes to the sleek white silk she is doomed to die in. All of her outfits are a bit cartoonish in their use of color and sensuality, but they’re the most eye-catching things on screen in London Fields, which otherwise paints its titular town in various shades of grey.

The very best thing about London Fields, to be quite frank, is not the main murder mystery, which gives one less and less to care about as the characters strive to top each other for despicability. Rather, it is the bizarre subplot involving Keith Talent and Chick Purchase having a showdown during a nationally televised darts championship. While most of the cast of London Fields underplay their characters to the point of falling flat (especially Thornton), Sturgess and Depp go hog wild; it’s almost as though the two actors are competing to see who can steal the most scenes even as their two characters compete at darts.

As Keith, the usually handsome Sturgess sports a treacle-thick c*ckney accent, greasy hair and a potbelly clad in a series of flashy tracksuits, while Depp appears to be channeling his Willy Wonka by way of Edward Scissorhands with Chick’s flamboyant style and scarred-up face. The final darts tournament between the two is straight out of The Hunger Games, complete with a bizarre emcee sporting a spray tan and silver pompadour. At first, I found Sturgess’ antics annoying; his jaw is thrust out in an absurdly aggressive underbite throughout the film and it’s nearly impossible to understand anything he says. But as the main storyline in London Fields grew increasingly dour, I grew to enjoy Keith’s madcap appearances – especially when he shared the screen with the menacing Chick.

London Fields: Conclusion

In the end, London Fields feels like it’s trying to accomplish too much, and as a result, accomplishes very little. Certain elements show flashes of the film it could have been; indeed, at its best moments, London Fields feels reminiscent of a pulpy comic book, a la Sin City. But, just like its beautiful protagonist, nothing is enough to save this film from a bad end.

What do you think? Does London Fields sound like an intriguing gamble or just a mess? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

London Fields is released in theaters in the U.S. on October 26, 2018. You can find more international release dates here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXYe_y686M&vl=en