Simply A Masterpiece

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Blistering performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Jamie lives at home with his mum on a housing estate in London, it's a fairly troubled part of the city. Jamie is very handsome, but lacks confidence, due to a heart shaped birth mark on his face. One evening Jamie's at a bus shelter with his mum when a group attack them, burning his mum alive in front of him. A series of events lead Jamie to a demon who promises anything for a returned favour of chaos. Jamie asks for his birth mark to be removed, and arises perfect. One of the Demon's servants arrives at Jamie's house and demands a brutal murder as payment.Each time I watch this film I'm blown away by just how imaginative it is, it manages to be profound, dark, engaging, funny and scary, Philip Ridley did an incredible job directing this. It's very much a film of two halves, the first a bit slower in tone, plenty of character development, the second a lot darker, posing plenty of moral questions.Jim Sturgess is brilliant in the title role. Joseph Mawle is insanely creepy as Papa B, such an enormously talented man. Clémence Poésy is good, and Timothy Spall's small role at the end show's his calibre.The mind is a wonderful thing, clearly his had masked some terrible goings on in his life. I think the definite message coming out of this film is beauty is inside, not what's on the surface.A film not to be missed, it takes you to some dark places, but is certainly rewarding. 8/10

Heartless is a hard film to categorize. It's horror, romance, thriller, crime, fantasy, and it's none of those. It's it's own undefinable package, a film that's almost impossible to summarize in a review, but I being the weird movie guy who reviews difficult messed up films, will try anyway. It's one part The Crow, one part Faust, with a dash of inner city gangland madness to shake things up. Most importantly, a beating heart emotional core that isn't always apparent through its gritty grin and bear it chain of events, but when it's there, it defines the film, like the heart shaped birthmark occupying the face of our lead defines him. He's played by Jim Sturgess, whose speciality is vulnerability, which he brings to the table here in spades. His aforementioned birthmark marks him a social outcast, dooming him to being the quiet, insecure loaner in a drab, smoky east end hole in the wall district. On the news he sees stories of demon masked hoodlums murdering innocent civilians. A little girl interrupts the newscast by shouting "they aren't masks". He doesn't know why, but he seems to believe her. He falls in love with a client of his slimy brother's photography business (Clemence Poesy), and is soon led by mysterious events to a derelict project high rise, inhabited by a scheming denizen known only as Papa B (Joseph Mawle, a clawing image of preening evil), who promises him riddance of the facial setback, if he performs but one simple task for him. There the film sets off into a confusing, hallucinatory stampede of violence, eerie occurrences and stunningly made dark fantasy. To say any more would give away the uniqueness and specific brand of filmmaking on display here, a style which you won't soon forget. There's a very odd aesthetic at work here, where every time you think you understand what's going on, it leaps just past your comprehension, like the hazy recollection of a nightmare. Despite its ambiguity which might frustrate some reviewers, it's a refreshingly bold, surprisingly heartfelt, devilish fable. I must mention Timothy Spall's cathartic cameo near the end which cements the films weird, twilight zone-ish vibe in an emotional state all its own, that it understands like the back of its gnarled, burn scarred hand, and invites you to try to as well.

Jamie lives in London with his mother and his father died where he was a child. He had the misfortune to be born with a mark in shape of a heart on his face and he has many other marks on his body, so he is mocked by others when he leaves his house. Soon discovers that some strange masked mens are making havoc on the streets and one night returning home along with his mother she is killed by these thugs. He wants to revenge her and is introduced to a weird and creepy man named Papa B and finds about him that he is nobody else then the devil and the guys on the street are his slaves. He makes a pact with him in witch the marks on him will disappear and could have a chance to be loved by a girl in exchange for a little favor from him. He accepts not knowing that the devil doesn't always play fair and now he must kill someone for him and also be afraid for his own life.The movie will surprise even those who are not fans of this genre with his uniqueness. It's dark, a little scary, has some scenes that will reminds of "Dahmer" and "The Devil's Advocate" and even though the message of the film is not necessarily a positive one, for me it worked.

I am sorry, but I just have to say that this movie was really bad!I mean, there was nothing, nothing at all that could be counted as a counter part. First of all the script - bad! confusing, in a wrong way. The main idea, if there is one, is lost somewhere way behind the lines. So called plot twists were not convincing at all, many have done this before and much, much better than this pathetic attempt. Some scenes where so "made", so unreal and sometimes even hilarious. At some point I thought to my self - are they kidding?In conclusion waste of time and nerves. I hate rewind button, but I would like to use it in this case :D