Review of London Fields (2018) by Hnestlyonthesly — 02 Mar 2020

This film spent years in production hell (over 20 executive producers are credited on this project), presumably because of Amber Heard's divorce from her allegedly abusive ex-husband Johnny Depp. I saw this after non-consensually watching PotC: Dead Men Tell No Tales for only the second time in my life at the gym this evening.

I had a feeling deep in my bones that something was terribly wrong when I saw the actress from Crawl teaming up with Grindelwald, which led me to this retrospective on the 2018 film released directly to streaming, London Fields.

Wife actually recommended a book by Martin Amos, the writer of this novel and screenplay. I liked Time's Arrow and so when I found out that he was responsible for what is essentially an erotic thriller starring Billy Bob Thornton and a clairvoyant femme fatale Amber Heard, I was all ears.

When I heard that this was the last film that she did with Johnny Depp before their break up due to spousal abuse, I put it on the back burner for a day when I had lost all self-respect, and look where we **** are.

Only took two years. All you need to know about this movie is that Billy Bob Thornton says the word "murderee" eight or nine times and tries to pass it off like it's a thing regular humans say.

He says it first in the prologue, which, lucky for you, will also be the epilogue verbatim, and the audience is supposed to politely ignore it like a fart at a dinner party. Then he types it in his word doc where a conspicuously red spellcheck squiggle blinks alarmingly underneath.

Then, as if daring us to question him, he names the first chapter of his novel, "The Murderee," suddenly no spellcheck to distract us. Once more, in the subject line of an email to his publisher and old flame, he types it again, and in the only bit of realism in this entire story, the publisher takes him not at all seriously after several days of polite silence.

There are a lot of these moments where you are left to quietly wonder to yourself if the writer is intentionally written to sound stupid or if it's an unintended consequence of trying to sound deep in voice over.

Billy Bob compares the darts game 505--a game that ends up being a lot more prominent than you first expect when you watch Keith Talent tossing a few nice ones at the target in the opening scene, to Texas Holdem, but he's confusing his metaphors with blackjack: "You go over 505 and you bust.

" It's the sort of word vomit you might not forgive with a single producer or even a handful of producers on a project, but which seems completely understandable after literally dozens of different people have gone over the script.

Inexplicably, Cara Delevigne makes a cameo as quiet and ineffectual wife. She has two or three lines, as if she's too bewildered by her own involvement in this movie to speak. The movie flirts with the line between taking itself too seriously and not taking itself seriously enough, especially when it comes to the way that it lays out Amber Heard as eye candy in every possible permutation of fetish wear it can find.

Her character, Nicola Six, smokily warns Billy Bob not to write her as a one dimensional character in his crime noir novel, but later, as she's dancing for him in a negligee made of basically tissue paper, she tells him, "You understand me," and he responds, "I know you're beautiful.

I know the whole world falls into you. Does whatever you want. Look at me and look at you." It's the kind of word salad that pushes the envelop on realism, feels like Billy Bob actually improvving some lines before having someone like Heard try to jump his bones, before telling her to "be still" and then giving her oral sex on the rooftop of an apartment building in central London.

That's probably not the worst sex-adjacent scene in this movie though. Take your pick between Heard pegging the greasy haired dart shark with a big black billy club she's got from her sexy police costume while images from the lesbian porno of a police stop flashes on the screen, and the moment when Billy Bob Thornton discovers a stash of polaroids showing Heard having Eyes Wide Shut sex with Draco Malfoy's dad in latex fetishwear dressed as a devil.

Did I not mention Draco Malfoy's dad is in this movie? Well, not exactly. His picture is in a bunch of frames and he's leaving not even passive aggressive, just plain aggressive negative phone calls to the writer who is house swapping with him while his hometown is up in flames.

He does show up toward the end in order to read the novel Billy Bob has written about the movie, which he then reads on a press tour during the credits roll for reasons that are unclear. None of this is made up.

My favorite is when Keith Talent has just been given assurances from Nicola Six that she'll pay his debts as long as he doesn't "touch" her. (Don't worry, it doesn't make any more sense even with context.

) Music starts to play, he lights a cigarette, and begins a snappy dance routine.