Review of Heartless (2010) by David O — 18 May 2010

Ridley's stagework has enjoyed the higher profile in recent times, but "Heartless" - set out around an East End that is at once tangible, terrifying and magical - serves as a welcome reminder of what a cinematic sensibility his is: Gilliam without the zaniness, del Toro with less dork.

The very fact it's taken the director a decade and a half to return to the screen suggests his visions have scarcely become any less confounding to the moneymen: the narrative here effectively sheds its skin at the halfway point and begins again, offering both the potential for redemptive romance (Poesy as a model who shares the hero's preference for film above digital photography) and a far greater threat to the protagonist's existence, as signalled by the arrival of Marsan, taut and coiled as the "Weapons Man" who leaves Jamie in no doubt as to the precise nature of the bargain he's struck.

If we're treading water for much of this second hour, waiting to learn our hero's ultimate fate, it allows Ridley to kick around some big themes (the permanency or impermanency of things; the importance of how we look at others, and how we, in turn, are looked at, in these age of easy image-making); unlike last year's loosely similar "Franklyn", which unraveled into chaos, you feel there's a degree of filmmaking intelligence at the helm here, tapping our fears about modern metropolitan living in far subtler, more persuasive ways than Clarke's "Kidulthood" features.

Not quite "Darkly Noon" strength, it's nevertheless imaginative and unusual, and in its closing stretch - with Spall as the memory of a loving dad who burns up into the night, like ashes from a fire - really rather moving.