London Rains Idiocy

Hunter Richards' directorial debut, London, is the most obnoxious sort of indie filmmaking, the kind that suffocates its obvious potential under dense layers of smarmy and unwarranted self-importance. Its fine and eccentric performances from talented and untested actors like Chris Evans and Jason Statham, and its frenzied moments of clarity are negated by the tired and juvenile story they serve-the end doesn't justify the means, and the means don't justify themselves.

London chronicles the wacky misadventures of a jilted guy named Syd (Evans) as he desperately tries to crash his titular ex-girlfriend's (Jessica Biel) moving-away party. If the characters' nauseatingly contrived names don't send up red flags in and of themselves, the opening sequence will, as it immediately communicates Richards' "I'm so hip I make circles look square" approach. Evans, whose multi-faceted turn is the film's saving grace, thrashes about his posh apartment as he learns that London didn't invite him to her last public appearance before her move to Los Angeles. He destroys everything from cans to phones before being swallowed by the film's hollow title card, a woefully inappropriate and illegibly italicized take on Citizen Kane's. It's the kind of introduction that screams to be noticed, and it's a moderately successful attempt... until the next scene, in which the film's vacuously adolescent dialogue reveals the prologue to be as empty as the title card that engulfed it.

If London plays out like the verbal masturbation of a party's most exceedingly pretentious guests, that's because it is-but with a metric ton of cocaine mixed in for good measure. After scoring some blow before London's shindig, Syd finds himself dragging his reluctant dealer, Bateman (the criminally under-used Statham), along with him for moral support. The duo invade the host's lavish apartment and hole up inside her cavernous bathroom (which, not surprisingly, sports New York's best views and the planet's finest artwork), where Syd furiously articulates his predicament, and Statham prays for Guy Ritchie to return to form.

Richards is just visually inventive enough to keep the location from wearing out its meager welcome, and the occasional flirtations between Statham and the intermittently present Joy Bryant (London's personal herald) do a great deal to spice things up. Yet it's Richards' most deliberate distraction that truly cripples the film's narrative momentum. He peppers his confined story with a series of flashbacks that detail the relationship that sent Syd into such a downward spiral. Syd and London are seen participating in a number of couple's activities, such as shopping and fighting. Unfortunately, each scenario is infused with Richards' take on post-adolescent alienation, which translates into Syd's being invariably frustrated as he mistakes love for control. A girl with a name like London could never live under a thumb, but that's exactly where Syd needs to keep his women. While such a flaw could make for an interesting study, Richards doesn't seem aware of his character's quasi-misogynistic shortcoming. Conversely, London masquerades as a validated pity party where wronged men (London cheated on Syd; Bateman is impotent) can blind themselves to their faults and wallow in their chauvinistic pity.

This story doesn't exactly demand to be told, a problem compounded by the way in which the copious amounts of cocaine impact its telling. Richards' misguided wisdom is not only relentless, it's aggressive, and it's made all the worse by the talented people from whom it's spewing. The disparity in quality between the leads and the words they share is palpable, a fact that Richards' bevy of scantily clad beauties can't begin to hide.

The aimless story builds to a conclusion mired by the marked and un-reflexive provinciality that dominates its body, and Richards' debut fizzles into cinematic purgatory. And though he rises above mediocrity often enough to deserve a second shot, his London is a vibrant mess that makes its namesake look positively luminous.