London Fields Finally Opens

After the success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, the unreliable narrator became all the rage in popular fiction, but Martin Amis had already been there and done that. Admittedly, his untrustworthy story-teller was a bloke rather than a “girl,” but the principal is the same. In this case, he also happened to be a failed novelist—an Amisian trope if ever there was one (see The Information). Long mired in legal and financial wrangling, Amis’s celebrated deceptive narrator finally gets a theatrical release, but he is not fooling anyone in Matthew Cullen’s London Fields (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Thus far, Samson Young’s literary career has been a miserable failure, but he picked the perfect time to visit London. Apocalyptic riots break out nightly across the city, but the lack of tourism meant the terminally ill writer could swing a flat exchange with pompous bestselling novelist Mark Asprey, swapping his crummy Hell’s Kitchen apartment for the tony London pad. As a further fringe benefit, Young discovers Asprey also has quite a beautiful neighbor in Nicola Six, who might just provide the inspiration for the page-turner he never had in him.

Young quickly learns Six has foretold the exact time of her death, which is fast approaching. However, she only knows she will be murdered—not by whom. For impishly perverse reasons, Six seems determined to help fate along, by stoking the lust and jealousy of the two leading suspects: flamboyant small-time hoodlum Keith Talent and petulantly entitled gentry-lad Guy Clinch. Young is convinced he can just record this real-life “novel” unfolding around him to finally score his bestseller.

The biggest problem with Roberta Hanley’s adapted screenplay is that we can immediately guess the big twist as soon as the film establishes all the main characters. Maybe it is all Gillian Flynn’s fault, but even if the troubled film had been released before Fincher’s Gone Girl, Cullen and Hanley simply do not incorporate enough misdirection to carry off the surprise. That is especially problematic, since they have stripped away most of the idiosyncrasy of Amis’s novel, opting to focus on the D.O.A.-ish noir plot-strand.

To give you an idea how long Fields has been held up, way back when it went into production, it was still considered a good idea to have Amber Heard and Johnny Depp in the same film. Depp is strangely uncredited, but that is probably for the best, considering his recent career setbacks. Frankly, he and Jim Sturgess are cringe-inducingly embarrassing as Talent and Chick Purchase, his pimped-out loan shark and professional darts nemesis. Admittedly, Heard is stuck with an underwritten character in Six, but at least she makes a credibly smoldering femme fatale. Theo James fares somewhat better than Sturgess as the shallow and easily manipulated Clinch, even though he is rather bland and forgettable.

In contrast, Billy Bob Thornton is unusually restrained as Young, but he still manages to chew a good bit of scenery. Frankly, Jason Isaacs largely steals the show, which is kind of sad, because most of his work as Asprey comes via voice messages to Young, sort of like the opening answering machine gag that always launched the Rockford Files credits.

To give credit where it is due, cinematographer Guillermo Navarro makes all look fabulously noir and stylish. The electronic score credited to Toydrum, Benson Taylor, and Adam Barber is also percussively propulsive, sounding quite appealingly influenced by Birdman and earlier crime jazz. Unfortunately, any viewer with any pop culture savvy will be way ahead of this film, which gives them plenty of time to lose patience with the shtickiness of Depp and Sturgess. It is not nearly as hideous as it is cracked up to be, but London Fields still isn’t recommended when it opens today (10/26) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Close to the Enemy: A Grand Hotel for Espionage

For many of Britain’s Greatest Generation, it was hard to believe how quickly things changed after the war, like the towering Winston Churchill getting turned out of office. That was obviously a mistake they rectified in 1951. For partially PSTD-rattled Victor Ferguson, making nice with “useful” National Socialist scientists is also a mistake. His older brother, Capt. Callum Ferguson might just agree with him, but his latest and most likely last assignment involves winning over a reluctant German aeronautical engineer. At least he will have agreeable digs for the gig. Ferguson and his charge will be “safely” ensconced within London’s only functioning luxury hotel in Close to the Enemy (trailer here), a seven-part British limited series, which releases today on DVD, from Acorn Media.

Victor Ferguson survived Monte Cassino, but he has been acting erratically and anti-socially ever since his discharge. Capt. Ferguson landed at Normandy. Outwardly, he is cool and confident, but we are given reason to believe his psyche is deeply troubled. Babysitting Dieter Koehler was not his idea, but if he can convince the German to help his new British patrons break the Sound Barrier first, he will be in a highly advantageous position to restart his engineering career. There are also fringe benefits to being stationed in the Connington Hotel. The food is decent and the aspiring actress-working girl staying in the next-door room is certainly friendly. Plus, an expat American jazz diva leads a legit swing band in the basement club, which is of particular interest to a frustrated composer like Ferguson.

Ferguson will steadily gain Koehler’s trust, initially through pleasing his little girl Lotte. Unfortunately, he is frequently called away to tend to brother Victor’s dramas. For reasons we never really understand, Ferguson also commences an affair with his best friend’s rich American fiancée, Rachel Lombard. More interestingly, the Captain develops a highly complicated working relationship with Kathy Griffiths, an investigator in the British war crimes office. Of course, she is trying to prosecute exactly the sort of people who have been stashed away at the Connington. Yes, much to Ferguson’s own surprise, it turns out there is another old National Socialist a rival agency is keeping on ice in the hotel.

Enemy is stuffed with characters and subplots, which espionage genre fans generally appreciate. In this case, it means the lists of what works and what flops are both long and detailed. The basics are pretty strong, starting with the Connington setting. Generally speaking, it is good fun to watch Ferguson skulking around mothballed building. It is sort of like Grand Hotel or Arthur Hailey’s Hotel, but with guns and war criminals. To give credit where it is due, Jim Sturgess, who can be pretty hit-or-miss is really terrific as Capt. Ferguson, nicely handling both his flip façade and slow-burning angst. However, his relationship with Charlotte Riley’s Lombard is never the slightest bit believable, especially when Charity Wakefield seems like so much more fun, as the slightly scandalous Julia.

Regardless, Capt. Ferguson is all business with Griffiths, but their scenes crackle with energy, thanks to the first-rate platonic love-hate chemistry Sturgess and Phoebe Fox share together. Speaking of fun, Angela Bassett is clearly having a blast playing the Billie Holiday-Josephine Baker composite. Then there’s Freddie Highmore as Victor Ferguson—and there’s just so blasted much of him. His petulantly boyish screen presence is so annoying, Martin Scorsese will probably make him the lead of his next six films if DiCaprio suddenly goes through puberty. Whenever Victor lurches onto the scene, everything comes to a screeching halt, even when the crafty old vet Alfred Molina tries to cover for him as Harold Lindsay-Jones, a retired Foreign Office official, who takes an interest in the Brothers Ferguson.

So, both columns of Enemy’s ledger are pretty full. Yet, thanks to Sturgess and the nearly bullet-proof hotel-for-spies premise, it keeps viewers sufficiently intrigued and invested to sit through Victor’s interminable acting up, so they can get back to the good stuff. Recommended for fans of British period spy dramas (despite Victor “Fingernails-on-the-Blackboard” Ferguson), Close to the Enemy is now available on DVD and BluRay, from Acorn Media.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken: Holland’s Most Notorious Abduction

Alfred Henry “Freddy” Heineken was sort of like the Netherlands’ Lindbergh Baby, except he was nobody’s victim. A desperate group of disenfranchised construction workers pulled off the truly daring abduction, but getting away clean turned out to be a trickier proposition. Nevertheless, their crime-of-the-century had considerable long term consequences that are duly revealed in Daniel Alfredson’s Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (trailer here), which opens this Friday.

Frankly, if Holland in the early 1980s had better respected property rights, Cor van Hout and his business partners might have never resorted to crime. They desperately needed a loan to keep their small construction enterprise afloat, but their only collateral was a building infested with legally protected squatters—not exactly a property the bank would be happy to assume should they default. Ironically, old man Heineken, a supporter of the Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, probably would have empathized. Regardless, when Van Hout and his hot-tempered mate Willem Holleeder resolve to follow Willie Sutton’s advice and go where the money is, it necessarily means Mr. Heineken.

Showing considerable patience, Van Hout, Holleeder, and their accomplices spend two years in planning, rather than rushing into the operation. They want the authorities to assume Heineken was grabbed by a well-funded international terrorist organization or the mob. Initially, it all goes according to plan, but old man Heineken is cool customer. His chauffeur Ab Doderer is a different story. Heineken tries to reassure his panicking employee through the walls of their makeshift cells, but the working class immigrant is not holding up well.

You can expect to see a lot of negative reviews of Mr. Heineken from those hung up on class warfare rhetoric because of its largely positive portrayal of Freddy Heineken. He is consistently calm, collected, and caring with respects to poor Doderer. It is also rich to learn how he responded to his kidnapping as a capitalist once he was released (no thanks to his captors).

In large measure, Mr. Heineken is the sort of caper film where the whole point is to watch it go spectacularly wrong. Getting the ransom is the easy part, as it usually is. The getaway is way more difficult. However, in this case, the endgame is especially long and twisty.

Screenwriter William Brookfield incorporates a number of fascinating historical details into the narrative and the mostly British Commonwealth cast looks appropriately continental and suitably beaten down where applicable. Of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins is totally credible as Freddy Heineken, instantly establishing his intelligence and charisma. Jim Sturgess does his best work in years as the angsty Van Hout, while Sam Worthington is reliably tightly wound as Holleeder (but not nearly as awesome-nuts as he was in the under-rated Texas Killing Fields).

Alfredson, who helmed the second two Swedish Lisbeth Salander films, keeps the action moving along and the tension cranked up, despite the fatalistic direction it must take. Cinematographer Fredrik Bäckar also gives it a gritty look that nicely suits the times. It is quite a well-produced period-thriller that does justice to fascinating real life events. Recommended quite highly, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken launches on iTunes and opens in select theaters this Friday (3/6), including George R.R. Martin’s Jean Cocteau Cinema in Albuquerque.

From Book to Chick Flick: One Day

June 15th is St. Swithin’s Day. It is a date of great enormity for two friends-almost-with-benefits, even more than Tax Day. It was on this day they first met each other and on subsequent St. Swithin's Days that events conspire to pull them apart and bring them back together. Romances come and go, but the pseudo-couple keep circling each other in Lone Scherfig’s One Day (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As BMOC, Dexter Mayhew never really noticed the mousy but attractive Emma Morley until the night of their graduation. She noticed him though. Unfortunately, when she finally gets him back to her place, he nearly bolts unceremoniously. Do not blame him too harshly. After all, she started playing Tracey Chapman records. If not exactly what she had in mind, they decide to friend-up for the night and friends they remain over the years to come. Yet, it is not really that simple.

Yes, boyfriends, girlfriends, live-ins, and spouses enter and exit, challenging the platonic relationship built on deep-seated mutual attraction. However, as the years pass and flashbacks return us to that fateful St. Swithin’s Day of 1988, we slowly learn the full extent of what passed between Mayhew and Morley.

Essentially, One Day is a Starbuck’s friendly updating of Same Time Next Year. However, the film’s march of time format keeps the pace rather brisk by chick flick standards. Scherfig wisely never belabors less eventful years, essentially flipping the calendar page as soon as a St. Swithin’s Day is played out. Adapted quite economically by David Nicholls from his own novel, OD is the second film co-produced by book publisher Random House and distributor Focus Features. One rather wishes he had titled it St. Swithin’s Day, but then he probably would have had two marketing departments out to wring his neck.

As for Anne Hathaway, she seems to think the film is titled Bridgit Jone’s Diary. She is okay, but essentially just hits the same slightly hippyish naïf note throughout the film. However, the high level of Jim Sturgess’ work truly comes as a surprise. Initially, he benefits from simply not being James Franco. Yet, as the years advance, he takes Mayhew on a real rollercoaster of a developmental arc, bottoming out several times, but never taxing our patience with histrionics. Who knew he had it in him?

For jazz fans, OD presents an added frustration by introducing a jazz musician character (one of Morley’s lovers, described as a free jazz pianist, no less), but never allowing us to hear his music. Instead, Rachel Portman penned an uncharacteristically bland score, augmented by a not-half-bad original song from the eternally cool Elvis Costello. It all certainly looks romantic, thanks to the sensitive lensing of cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, who nicely capitalizes on the picturesque London, Paris, and Edinburgh locations.

Ultimately, there is no getting around OD’s chick flickiness. Still, guys who have been resisting their girlfriends’ movie suggestions should consider biting the bullet here. Not only is Scherfig’s approach unexpectedly engaging and Sturgess’ work shockingly good, they might perversely enjoy the big third act drama. For those who enjoy a sad love story, OD opens this Friday (8/19) in New York at the Clearview Chelsea and Regal Union Square.