London (2006)

I didnt expect so much from this movie but it get very interesting during it. This is the best movie i ever seen since 2000

What's the most honest conversation you've ever had? What did it take to get you there?I saw this movie by accident years ago and initially got caught up in the train wreck of the characters lives. However, as the story continues with absolutely perfectly framed scenes it slowly strips away the characters every wall, crutch, and dependency by which they hide the truth about themselves. What's left are the connections they have made with each other. If you can grasp that, welcome...enjoy the party. You'll appreciate the set pieces/props and their metaphoric roll, from Wheatfield with Crows to Buddha.Hunter Richards is absolutely brilliant and doesn't get enough credit and the critics have deprived us all of a magnificent director....if you just see drug addicts and sexualization there's always cartoons or Michael Bay films - both fun to watch.

At some point in its creative gestation, even if only briefly, London had to have been conceived as a stage play. I mean, 80% of the story takes place inside a gigantic bathroom and 99% of it is people blathering on about the sort of thing you blather on about when it's very late and you've had to much to drink or snort. The other 1% is waiting to see if Jessica Biel gets completely nude.Syd (Chris Evans) is an aimless druggie who decides to crash the going away party of his ex-girlfriend London (Jessica Biel). He drags with him Bateman (Jason Statham), a currency trader who's twice as old and twice as f'd up as Syd, and the two of them hang out in the bathroom, doing line after line of cocaine and spilling their guts to each other. A couple of hot chicks (Kelli Garner and Joy Bryant) wander into the john to break up the monotony and there's a series of flashbacks to when Syd and London were still together. It all builds up to Syd finally leaving the toilet behind and confronting London, who initially blows him off like an icy bitch but then flees the party with him, only to have one of those "realistic" endings where they don't actually get back together and the audience is supposed to wallow in the pedestrian tragedy of it all.Amidst all the verbal diarrhea, this film does make it perfectly clear why Syd and London broke up. It's because Syd is an insecure, immature and altogether intolerable dickhead. Why they got together or stayed together is a riddle. Why the viewer should give two craps about Syd's misery after the break up or have any sympathy with his desperate desire to get London back is an mystery. Why London bothers to give Syd the time of day at the party, let alone run away with him and give him a goodbye boink, is an enigma. Syd is a thoroughly uninteresting and unappealing jagoff, which pretty much cripples this motion picture on every level.Jason Statham nearly performs a faith healing on the film to make it almost watchable and not just because he's got hair in this thing. Not only is Bateman more screwed up than Syd, he understands his problems and demonstrates an effort to try and control them. Bateman is a man and is made even manlier by contrast with to the juvenile Syd. The, by far, best scene in the film is when Bateman narrates a flashback about his trip to an sadomasochistic sex club. It's not just because it's such a relief to see something visually provocative after people standing and yammering at each other, but also because Bateman's narration shows him to be grappling with his emotions and compulsions. The second best scene is when he rages at Syd over what ruined Bateman's marriage. Bateman's torment blows all of Syd's self-indulgent suffering out of the water and even the movie seems to understand that. Writer/director Hunter Richards totally recognizes that Bateman is a man and Syd is a boy, but still decides to focus on the boy. I don't know how he wrote this script without appreciating that Bateman was the best character in it and I can only imagine he finally realized it when he tried to edit it all together and saw the only two legitimately good scenes in the whole thing were completely centered on Bateman.Now, if you like films where people just talk and talk and talk, alternating between soul baring revelations and airy BS like the kind you get from college freshmen after their first philosophy class, you might still enjoy London. If you want a movie that moves and a main character who doesn't make you want to poke his eyes out, you should probably give this one a pass.And just in case you're wondering, Biel does not get completely nude, so there goes that 1%.

A lot of movies are made to target specific audiences.Chris Evans plays a young man who is still hung up on his ex girlfriend. Jessica Biel (his then real life girlfriend) plays "London", the eponymous, ever alluring object of his affection. Jason Statham plays an enlightened man, confused about his ethical stances.It's based in New York, mostly in the bathroom of an ostentatious duplex apartment filled with ridiculously attractive men and women at a going away party of lovely London. There's cocaine usage and camera usage that will stupefy you. The score is brilliant, I'm told it's mostly The Crystal Method.And finally, the dialogue. It's like Hunter Richards (The writer/director) stepped into the soul of every single man brought to inexplicable anguish because of a woman, and managed to articulate it in what seems like the words you and I are all too familiar with.Like I said before, a lot of films seem to be made for specific audiences. If you're in the mood for a fun, beautifully scripted film about love and loss and pain, this film has you written all over it.Enjoy.