Variety: In the opening pages of Martin Amis’ 1989 mind-trip murder mystery “London Fields,” the author notes that the story that follows will not be a who-done-it, but rather a why-do-it. Finally arriving on the screen after years of aborted attempts, Mathew Cullen’s adaptation proves that shepherding the book to the cinema was always less a a case of how-do-it than why-try-it. Substituting for Amis’ post-punk Nabokovian prose a blitz of heavily stylized visuals straight out of some post-apocalyptic Chanel commercial, this spiraling story of sex, murder, darts, premillennial dread and authorial anxiety becomes a veritable hash of garish, disassociated tableaux. Despite lush photography and a cast attractive enough to lure curious distributors, this misbegotten mess risks suffering the same fate at the box office that befalls its heroine on her dead-end street, but Cullen genuinely deserves credit for making it this far — sometimes you have to try to adapt a seemingly unadaptable book just to learn how truly unadaptable it is.
A tired murder mystery with a clairvoyant woman in love with three men, one of whom will be her killer.
Deadline: Lionsgate/Grindstone has just closed a low-seven-figure deal for London Fields, a film that opened with some controversy as director Matthew Cullen filed suit just before its Tuesday industry screening against producer Chris Hanley over a cut of the movie that wasn’t completely of the director’s making. The adaptation of Martin Amis’ novel stars Amber Heard, Theo James, Jim Sturgess, and Billy Bob Thornton is set to have its public premiere on September 18. The film focuses on a clairvoyant femme fatale named Nicola Six, who has been living with a dark premonition of her impending death by murder. She begins a tangled love affair with three uniquely different men, one of whom she knows will be her murderer.
