Heard, who certainly has the requisite physical allure for the part, puts in a decent enough turn as the enigmatic Six but, like her on-screen character, can seemingly do the nothing to prevent the brutal murder, either of herself, or of Amis’s bestseller.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Screen International by Allan Hunter
London Fields overflows with interesting ideas but they are frequently buried under lurid fantasy sequences, blunt-edged satire and the sense that it is much more amused by its own wild daring than we are.
[A] misbegotten mess.
This London Fields is nothing but fallow ground. Or, to apply the metaphor that Thornton’s scribe gives to Heard’s sexed-up temptress when he first meets her, it’s a black hole — something that sucks talent, taste, light, energy and matter into maw and leaves everything stranded in a void.
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
The aggressively awful London Fields is, once again, proof that not every successful novel should become a movie.
Novelistic, rich and awfully silly, London Fields – like Ben Wheatley’s take on High Rise - is a long-awaited adaptation of a popular and gloomily prophetic book, that seems unnecessary.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
London Fields, directed by Matthew Cullen and adapted from Martin Amis’s 1989 novel, is, quite simply, horrendous — a trashy, tortured misfire from beginning to end.
The Playlist by Nikola Grozdanovic
Buried underneath the glop are interesting notions on reality, creation, and the nature of death. And thanks to its aesthetic, it's at least a very beautiful catastrophe.
It’s a neo-noir murder mystery capturing Heard at peak femme fatale in a tale observed, manipulated and told by a struggling writer (Billy Bob Thornton) for “the chaos.” “Chaos” doesn’t quite sum up the movie. But almost.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
So comprehensively does the film fail to represent the labyrinthian literary wonders of Amis’ book that it scarcely seems worthwhile to detail its universal shortcomings.