London Fields (2018)

1. It's been a while since I'm trying to do a strict selection of what I watch - unfortunately time is limited, movies to pick from not. 2. "London Fields" was a guilty pleasure - where after watching I'd say it was more guilty and less pleasure. 3. IMDb gives it 4.3, Metacritic ranks at 16/100, and RottenTomatoes shows an epic 0% for this title, which should be more than enough as a red flag of "stay away!" - but Amber Heard has green eyes, and eventually I gave up resisting...

...in my defense: not before finding out that there is a director's cut, apparently a bit better than the initial version released a year ago. To be honest, I'm not sure what version I did watch, but from what I heard I tend to think it was the one which is at least a bit better edited. Meaning that we have some continuity in the action, which you can follow, compared to the chaotic development I heard it's present in the initial version. Now, about the contents of this action, oh well...

"London Fields" wants to be a neo-noir mystery set around a femme fatale: Nicola Six, who enter a bar some day, where she intersects her path with 3 guys, and has a vision of her own death at her 30th anniversary being cause by one of them. Only that she doesn't know who's the murderer... an American writer, temporarily moved in London, a drunk darts player, broke and heavily in debt, or a young banker, whose IQ seems similar with the degree of variation in his everyday life. In this context we have a love triangle getting shape (or better said a square), though without getting much sense. Or if there is one, the movie doesn't offer much reason to lose also extra time to look for it. The mystery part is at least partially shattered at a certain moment when you find out that one of the three guys doesn't have much to lose. The neo-noir part is also fading away quite fast due to the directing style, not having many scenes to support it. And still...

There is a certain action thread that the movie follows. Nicola struggles to get money from a guy to pay another one's debt, while the third is observing all of it. It's not very clear why she's doing that. As well as her reaction of accepting the cruel fate. Anyway, with the exception of Jim Sturgess, whose overacting is a bit too "over", the actors do a good job. Despite a gratuitous Razzie nomination, Amber Heard (with all the objectivity I can have) can act, and actually she does a good part here compared to others. There are also a couple scenes of what looks to be the "director's cut" that have some artistic sparkle in them in respect to editing/camera work. Shame though there are a couple more that cancel that. The major problem though is the story and the script - both having Martin Amis as author, who also signed a best-seller with the same name, 30 years ago.

As an objective conclusion, I don't know how the novel managed to gain success, but a bizarre mixture of romance with tons of darts thrown in, barely showing some clear ending, it's probably a good alternative only to a B series movie, instead of a sleeping pill. It can be worse though ("The Counselor" comes to my mind). At least here I didn't expect anything. Anyway, as another option of a mystery with a sort of a femme fatale central character, I reviewed a while ago "A Simple Favor". Much more clever, and overall much, much, much better.

Rating: 2 out of 5 ( objectively ;) - subjectively +0.5 :P )