London (2006) – DVD

*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
starring Chris Evans, Jason Statham, Jessica Biel, Joy Bryant
written and directed by Hunter Richards

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I'll say this for Hunter Richards's London: it's compelling enough that you want its "hero" to get his. Whatever the (obnoxious, belligerent, self-absorbed) nature of main character Syd (Chris Evans), he's a well-drawn example of a common macho type, meaning the more stupid things he does the more you crave to see his comeuppance. But "payback" in this case would mean rejection by his ex-girlfriend London (Jessica Biel), whose going-away party he's just crashed–and no matter how many flashbacks we get to him behaving like a jerk in her presence, the film's total commitment to his point-of-view gives us the sinking feeling that he's not going to receive the brush-off he deserves. And sure enough.

A more astute or perhaps objective writer-director would have found Syd's behaviour amusing–that is, the Pinter claustrophobia created by his barging into a party uninvited and then holing up in the bathroom the entire time. But in the heavy, inexperienced hands of Richards, this is occasion to have massive sub-Eric Bogosian exchanges while doing lines off a Van Gogh reproduction. Flanked by his trusty coke-dealer Bateman (Jason Statham), who's been dragged there against his better judgment, Syd proceeds to go through the motions of a) complaining about how much he misses London (the girl, not the city), b) professing half-considered beliefs tending towards atheism, and c) relating the rocky relationship he's desperate to rekindle. A relationship, I might add, that involves the belittlement of the woman to whom he can't even say "I love you."

Yet the detail in which Richards sketches Syd's quirks makes it irresistable to rubberneck. One isn't quite sure how to take his ranting: it could be a satire of a drug-addled hipster's mentality or it could be a vindication of same, and you stick around to see how it'll all shake down. Still, he's a hard character to take. The flashback scenes involve his ridiculous possessiveness and pseudo-intellectual bullying as London tries desperately to reason with him; after a few of these, you wonder why the hell she stuck around in the first place. There's another movie to be made about why some women tolerate a drip like Syd, but that's not on Richards's mind. Mostly, he's interested in elaborating upon the protagonist's self-martyrdom–which, while fascinating, only has the effect of blotting out any reason we might have to sympathize.

True, the older Bateman (his name an allusion, perhaps, to one of the snort genre's pioneers, Bret Easton Ellis)–who has an Edward Albee sexual dysfunction that renders him "tragic" as well as a variety of sexual peccadilloes that at least make his getting-serious act funny–exposes Syd's callowness for what it is. But an about-face by London at the end is as puzzling as it is unlikely–unlikely, at least, for the assertive, no-nonsense woman we glimpse throughout the picture. We're assured that the young man has grown wiser, more chastened, but I wasn't buying it for a minute: nothing in that bathroom suggests that Syd was ready for a committed relationship with anything other than the asthmatic dog from whom he pinches barbiturates.

THE DVD
Sony's DVD release of London is good but suffers from a saturation overload that's common for the studio. Though the 2.31:1, 16×9-enhanced image is quite vivid, it pumps up the colours to the point of obscuring fine detail. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix is not bad considering this is a movie full of talk: there aren't a lot of serious FX cues (although a smashed fish tank early on blasts us awake), but the bass-heavy music of The Crystal Method percolates in the surround and LFE channels. Extras begin with a commentary featuring Hunter Richards and associate producer Ross Weinberg that begins with the pair opening a bottle of wine, continues with a shout-out to the recording studio and its engineer (one Max Boulanger), and doesn't exactly improve from there. That Richards may himself be chemically dependant is established by his admission that he and the cast used illegal codeine-based drugs from England to beat the colds that swept the set; one imagines the film's subject matter striking close to home. If it's not the most insightful track, it is perhaps an unintentionally revealing one.

Less eye-opening is a making-of featurette (9 mins.) wherein cast members Evans, Biel, and Joy Bryant reveal their close connection to the film and note Richards's "craziness." No big secrets here, other than Biel divulging a "psychotic" relationship at age 16. Meanwhile, three out of four deleted scenes don't provide much beyond giving Syd/Evans two more opportunities to act like a jackass and a pointlessly-distended version of the approach to the party; the fourth is a weird conversation between two French people at a bar about a Chagall-esque artist who loses his hands in a motorcycle crash. I have no idea how it was supposed to fit into the final product, but it's nutty just the same. Underworld: Evolution and When a Stranger Calls previews launch on startup, and they're joined by trailers for The Squid and the Whale, The Tenants, Where the Truth Lies, National Lampoon Presents Barely Legal, Pretty Persuasion, The Baxter, 8MM 2, Lila Says, and Sex and the Teenage Mind under a separate sub-menu.

92 minutes; R; 2.31:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround; CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony