Heartless (2010)
To say that Philip Ridley's new supernatural thrillerHeartless is moralistic filmmaking so wrong-headed as to become mean-spirited might, to some, seem harsh or dismissive. After all, this story of a young photographer who was born with a purple, heart-shaped birthmark right smack on his face and, upon the violent death of his saintly mother (Ruth Sheen), attempts to hunt down a gang of reptilian-faced demons in hooded sweatshirts ultimately conveys a very positive message: That inner beauty will ultimately win out over external flaws. But the aim of Heartless is not nuance, healthy discord nor even good-natured fun but rather carries the tone of a bully, convoluting every plot turn and gleefully dousing the film in extravagant and cruel violence in the hopes of making self-righteous, holier-than-thou pandering seem exciting and entertaining.
And it was entertaining, exciting and unerringly insightful when the young man with the birthmark, Jamie (Jim Sturgess), went by the name of Doctor Faust in German folklore. Jamie's demands of holy vengeance, which he originally seeks with a gun from a local grocer, lead him to the lair of Papa B (a sufficiently sinister Joseph Mawle), a crime boss with a burnt paw and powers that seem awfully reminiscent of Mephistopheles; the "B" stands for Beelzebub, get it? For the promise of graffiti-tagging buildings once a month and just a bit of self-evisceration, Papa B will grant Jamie his most vein wish: To be rid of his birthmark and therefore clear the way for Jamie to ask out a friendly model (Clémence Poésy).
Anyone who knows Heartless' unsung source material knows that nothing involving Lucifer could ever be simple and Jamie soon finds out that he owes much more than a few cans of spray paint to his dark master. The result is a complete mess and Ridley, who is also credited with writing the screenplay for the film, disrupts, deflects and diverts attention from the heart of the film's story accordingly, employing a general lack of reason, focus and tonal consistency. All of which might be just a bit easier to swallow if the film wasn't so self-serious and self-satisfied with its cruel judgments, which range from dismemberment to burning innocents alive to the removal of beating hearts.
That final brutal act is what Jamie is tasked with by Papa B's weapons man, who is played by the great Eddie Marsan in a far-too-brief scene. This constitutes the sole enjoyable five minutes of Heartless' bloated 109-minute runtime, most pointedly because Marsan plays his role with a macabre humor which escapes every other performer involved. By the time the film hits its triple lindy of a climax, so needlessly and frivolously complicated and overtly expositional that it loses all meaning, Ridley has gone so far as to make Jamie out to be less of a cautionary tale than a martyr dying for all the sins of the information age. In fact, a news report weakly sets up that these roaming street demons are the byproduct of an epidemic spawned by YouTube and a culture overdosed on video content. It would seem that Ridley is completely oblivious to his own hypocrisy, as he baits most of his condescending message with the promise or spectacle of heinous violence. Indeed, a film's title has rarely been so apropos.
And it was entertaining, exciting and unerringly insightful when the young man with the birthmark, Jamie (Jim Sturgess), went by the name of Doctor Faust in German folklore. Jamie's demands of holy vengeance, which he originally seeks with a gun from a local grocer, lead him to the lair of Papa B (a sufficiently sinister Joseph Mawle), a crime boss with a burnt paw and powers that seem awfully reminiscent of Mephistopheles; the "B" stands for Beelzebub, get it? For the promise of graffiti-tagging buildings once a month and just a bit of self-evisceration, Papa B will grant Jamie his most vein wish: To be rid of his birthmark and therefore clear the way for Jamie to ask out a friendly model (Clémence Poésy).
Anyone who knows Heartless' unsung source material knows that nothing involving Lucifer could ever be simple and Jamie soon finds out that he owes much more than a few cans of spray paint to his dark master. The result is a complete mess and Ridley, who is also credited with writing the screenplay for the film, disrupts, deflects and diverts attention from the heart of the film's story accordingly, employing a general lack of reason, focus and tonal consistency. All of which might be just a bit easier to swallow if the film wasn't so self-serious and self-satisfied with its cruel judgments, which range from dismemberment to burning innocents alive to the removal of beating hearts.
That final brutal act is what Jamie is tasked with by Papa B's weapons man, who is played by the great Eddie Marsan in a far-too-brief scene. This constitutes the sole enjoyable five minutes of Heartless' bloated 109-minute runtime, most pointedly because Marsan plays his role with a macabre humor which escapes every other performer involved. By the time the film hits its triple lindy of a climax, so needlessly and frivolously complicated and overtly expositional that it loses all meaning, Ridley has gone so far as to make Jamie out to be less of a cautionary tale than a martyr dying for all the sins of the information age. In fact, a news report weakly sets up that these roaming street demons are the byproduct of an epidemic spawned by YouTube and a culture overdosed on video content. It would seem that Ridley is completely oblivious to his own hypocrisy, as he baits most of his condescending message with the promise or spectacle of heinous violence. Indeed, a film's title has rarely been so apropos.
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