London Boulevard
Director: William Monahan
Starring: Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley, Ray Winstone, Ben Chaplin
**
The ghosts of a thousand London gangster movies hang like a damp fog over this glitzy but uneven crime thriller from the first-time director William Monahan, the American screenwriter who won an Oscar for scripting Martin Scorsese's The Departed.
Colin Farrell wrestles with his wobbly stage-Cockney accent as an anguished ex-con torn between working for Ray Winstone's menacingly genial gangland boss and playing minder to Keira Knightley's lonely, isolated screen star.
When romance sparks between them, his loyalties are tested to the limit. Ken Bruen's source novel paid knowing homage to the classic Billy Wilder film noir, Sunset Boulevard. Monahan makes the characters younger and the tone lighter, throwing in plenty of his own cinematic tributes. There are echoes here of Performance, The Bodyguard, Notting Hill, Layer Cake - in other words, this feels like a patchwork movie stitched together from other films, not from real life.
Even worse, all are films we have seen dozens of times before. Farrell and Winstone are charismatic performers but both are trapped inside tired caricature roles, full of swagger but not remotely believable. The crucial element that saves London Boulevard from sinking into self-referential cliché is its high-calibre supporting cast of left-field British actors, bringing layers of richness and realism that the main players fail to deliver.
Eddie Marsan and David Thewlis, veterans of Mike Leigh's gritty urban dramas, both give memorable turns - Thewlis is especially good as a seedy, corrupt, washed-up actor. Ben Chaplin and Anna Friel also provide solid support. What a shame everyone is lumbered with such predictable, pedestrian material.
