London Boulevard

Bit of a modern noir crime thriller, and the plot is a bit "stop me if you've heard this one before", frankly. Colin Farrell is an gangster, or would-be ex-gangster who's just been released from prison. He's not specifically got any plan for what he is going to do with his life, but on the other hand, he doesn't want to go back inside, so intends to make a change. On his first day out of prison, life presents him with two opportunities. His mate Billy wants to bring him in on a loan sharking operation, and a chance encounter rescuing a woman from a couple of muggers leads to a job offer as a minder for Kiera Knightley, a film star who's gone into seclusion, and needs help keeping the papparazzi out of her place.

Unfortunately, Billy's boss is a patently unhinged Ray Winstone, who's one of those crime bosses who's completely unreasonable, and won't take no for an answer, and what he wants is Colin Farrell working for him. It's never been completely clear to me why you occasionally get a crime boss dead set on having the protagonist work for them, way beyond the point where it seems likely that the protagonist will willingly agree, and thus be a reliable employee, but then I suppose that if you don't get to be a crime boss if you're reasonable and willing to compromise.

Also floating around the place is David Thewliss as Kiera Knightley's manager/friend/massively drug abusing person who hangs around her house, a washed up thespian, and far and away the best turn in the film. Whatever else, every moment he's on the screen is a gem.

So, anyway, there we have the seeds of a conflict, the growing relationship between Farrell and Knightley, and the spectre of Ray Winstone threatening to go nuts and destroy everything, if only by turning Farrell back into the man he doesn't want to be anymore in order to fight him.

If the film has a weakness, it's that it has pretty patchy direction. Which is not to say that it's pedestrian, far from it. It's shot in a pretty naturalistic style. Some scenes, it turns out great. Some scenes, well, Farrell and Winstone pretty much mumble at each other and it's not clear what's being said (though to be fair, regardless of the words, the intent is never in question.) Also patchy is the cutting; Sometimes there's a quick succession of short scenes, flitting between the various protagonists, and it sometimes feels a bit haphazard and randomly assembled. This is William Monahan's first go in the chair, having been a screenwriter prior to this. So I'd say that he's got a lot of raw talent, but he needs to hone the rough edges.

But overall, despite some shortcomings in assembly, this is a pretty stylishly made crime thriller.