Having cut his teeth as the writer of several hard-boiled thrillers that feature bullets, body counts, and bloodlust, it was no surprise when Academy Award-winning The Departed scribe William Monahan opted to pull double duty and make his directorial debut on street-level gangster caper London Boulevard.
However, the end result was more akin to his screenplays for undercooked pair Body of Lies and Edge of Darkness than Martin Scorsese’s modern classic, with a 38 percent Rotten Tomatoes score also ensuring that London Boulevard wound up as the single worst-reviewed film Monahan had ever been a part of, finishing a solitary point ahead of the butchered Kingdom of Heaven theatrical release.
There was plenty of style to be found, but the narrative was the sort of cliched tale of low-level criminals and star-crossed lovers that’s been seen and done countless times over, with barely a shred of originality to be found. Colin Farrell stars as an ex-con who lands a job protecting Keira Knightley’s actress from the paparazzi, and it’s not long before the sparks fly.
Of course, the reformed prisoner also wants revenge on the people who brutalized one of his friends, while there’s also a couple of mobsters, a wayward sister, and threats of death and violence thrown into the mix. London Boulevard is about as formulaic as it gets, then, but that hasn’t deterred Netflix users from adding it to their watch-list.
As per FlixPatrol, the mundane march through the illegal underworld has charted on the platform’s most-watched list, which is the first moment in the spotlight the movie has enjoyed since it first arrived (and bombed) 12 years ago.