Watching Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in "London Fields", the Ham-fisted Adaptation of Martin Amis's Novel

Two Actors of Wildly Divergent Talents Get Together in a Cinematic Disaster

Amber Heard in “London Fields”

Johnny Depp, uncredited, in “London Fields”

Overruling my own objections, I watched “London Fields”, since it was free (albeit with ads intruding jarringly) on Amazon Prime. At first I was pleasantly surprised: the first half hour follows the novel faithfully, and therefore makes sense. One by one the main characters arrive: Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton), the dying, blocked writer; Keith Talent (Jim Sturges) the cheat and gypsy cab driver; Guy Clinch (Theo James) the unhappy, rich idiot; and Nicola Six (Amber Heard), the psychic femme fatale with a trail of ruined men in her wake. Nicola knows she will be murdered on her next birthday, aka, Guy Fawkes Day, and sets about finding the murderer. Samson, jolted out of his writer’s block as soon as he meets Nicola, feverishly begins to turn her story into a novel. Keith, intent on extracting whatever money he can from Samson and Guy while seducing (or so he thinks) Nicola, is on the run from a loan shark named Chick Purchase. Chick, a far more violent and fearsome criminal than Keith, is played by none other than Johnny Depp.

Not that you’d know it from the credits, since Depp made sure his name appears nowhere in them. Unrecognizable behind Elton John glasses and a network of gruesome facial scars, he swaggers up in a loud suit and bowler hat and speaks in a credible Cockney accent. I realized Chick was Johnny Depp, because—unlike everyone else in “London Fields”—he lights up the screen. Not having seen a Depp movie in years, I’d forgotten his star power and acting ability. Although he appears only two or three times more in the course of “London Fields”, I had the same reaction every time: I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

If only that were the case for Heard. Though she has by far the most screen time of the cast, she makes a comparatively minor impression. The fact that she is opulently made-up, coiffed and costumed (in an impressive assortment of lingerie, black lace and sheer, plunging gowns) makes the phenomenon even stranger. Her tepid screen presence can’t be blamed on the director (Matthew Cullen, whose background in music videos did not serve him well) or cinematographer (Guillermo Navarro), both of whom lavish attention on Heard’s pretty face and perfect body. Nor can it be blamed on Heard’s performance, which is consistent and not nearly as awful as her Golden Raspberry implies. (That award should have gone to Jim Sturges, who gives the hammiest, most embarrassing screen performance I’ve ever seen. He makes Jerry Lewis look like Daniel Day-Lewis.) Rather, Heard’s problem is as old as film itself: the camera loves her not.

As “London Fields” goes on, it gets weirder and wilder. Those who haven’t read the novel will find it incomprehensible; those who have will be merely confused. Because much of the action consists of internal dialogue and flashbacks, Amis and his co-screenwriter Roberta Hanley use video clips, newscasts and, at one point, a Greek chorus that (I think) exists in Samson Young’s mind, all smashed together thanks to terrible editing. Beyond the problems of Nicola and company, “London Fields” addresses bigger ones: the looming millennium, environmental disaster and the threat of nuclear annihilation. As London falls into chaos, the movie depicting it falls into incoherence.

It’s all a bit much. At some point I dozed off, waking just in time to see Johnny Depp’s sweeping entrance at the climactic darts (this is still England, after all) competition. Trailing him is—hello!—Martin Amis, playing a fellow gangster. Whether Amis knew at the time that he was making a dog’s dinner of his novel is debatable, but I’ll bet he knows it now.