Heartless poster & wallpaper
Get movie widget Recommend it Add to Favorites

Jim Sturgess, Clémence Poésy, Noel Clarke, Joseph Mawle, Eddie Marsan ... see more see more... , Luke Treadaway , Timothy Spall , Ruth Sheen , Jack Gordon , Justin Salinger , Nikita Mistry , Fraser Ayres , John Macmillan

Jim Sturgess (21, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE) leads a hugely-talented ensemble cast in this sublime British psychological thriller from cult UK director Philip Ridley (THE REFLECTING SKIN, THE PASSION OF DAR... read more read more...KLY NOON), who returns to the screen after a 14-year absence. The film follows Jamie Morgan (Sturgess), born with a disfiguring birthmark across his face, which leaves him an outcast in rough East London. While wandering abandoned yards taking photographs, he comes across a gang of thugs and soon discovers that they are something other than human. He then is led into a Faustian deal that will see him become a party to the terrifying chaos around him. Part DONNIE DARKO, part Guillermo del Toro, this dark urban tale takes its audience to the darkest and most violent corners of the human heart. The film also stars Clémence Poésy, Noel Clarke, Joseph Mawle, Eddie Marsan, Luke Treadaway and Timothy Spall, and was produced by Pippa Cross and Richard Raymond. The film recently won the Best Independent Film Award at the Toronto After Dark Festival. -- (C) IFC

Flixster Users

45% liked it

12,020 ratings

Critics

75% liked it

36 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 50 min.

Directed by: Philip Ridley

Release Date: November 19, 2010

Invite friends to see

DVD Release Date: April 12, 2011

Get It:

Stats: 513 reviews

report incorrect info

Photos

Tia Clémence Poésy in Heartless Clémence Poésy and Jim Sturgess Heatless
Upload a Photo | View All Heartless Photos

Your Rating


clear rating

Flixster Reviews (513)

  • bbcfloridabound
    January 30, 2012
    bbcfloridabound
    A British thriller about a young man who has a birthmark across his face and body, everyone stares at him as shun's him no matter what he does or where he goes, father dead passing on the hobby of Photography to him. While out shooting pictures he stumbles across so deamon like c... read morereachters. We would also do anything to be loved by a beautiful girl. Doing anything means making a pact with the devil, the pact is he must kill someone once a month or face the consequecis. Pretty good thriller, 3 1/2 stars
  • fb100000059176003
    June 4, 2011
    fb100000059176003
    Heartless is the B-Movie Arthouse film that takes on a unique interpretation to one's sense of reality with bizarre details both in production design and the protagonist's outlook. This imaginative script has the potential to go more deeply in to it's essence of darker urban horr... read moreor and psychological feats. But nonetheless, it's a good watch of a thriller that nowadays are lacking.
  • 366weirdmovies
    May 8, 2011
    366weirdmovies
    Jamie, a photographer with a disfiguring birthmark sees demons on the streets of London, then is drawn into a Faustian deal with a sinister character known as "Papa B." Ambitious in scope with some effective scenes (especially the scene where Jamie first strikes the Hellish barg... read moreain with Papa B), but the mix of dramatic character study, social commentary, surrealism, and horror movie cliches doesn't always gel.
  • CrookedlittleB33
    April 15, 2011
    CrookedlittleB33
    Review TBC.
  • ythelastman89
    April 12, 2011
    ythelastman89
    I don't know why I was so excited to see this, but it's really just not good. It has a nice concept, if you can call it that, but the amateurish directing fails to capture the actors good side. It's almost like he purposefully made these people look like they were giving bad perf... read moreormances. It's sad when a British Superstar like Jim Sturgess is taken down by a poor execution and skill. This should be something that is essential to a director and cinematographer; performance over a comfortable or easy position. The story itself could have been really good if it was handled better, but the mood was all over the place and it tended to fall on the melodramatic side for no particular reason.
  • fb733768972
    April 5, 2011
    fb733768972
    This film made me feel like I had absolutely no heart, riding along with this brutally psychological story of a man who is born with a heart shaped birth mark, separating him from the likes of everyone around him. He has been isolated his entire life, and as he grows older, the o... read morenly people he has to turn to are his family members, who are the only ones who understand his condition. As his mom is murdered right in front of his eyes by a group of masked thugs, he takes a ride to the main floor down an elevator, but ends up stopping on a random floor. He is sent a picture message telling him which door to enter in the hallway. As he enters he is given a deal which would in the long run mean that he must write words against God, as graffiti on a wall, once every two months. The upside is that his birth marks will be removed. Word of caution: expect the unexpected. This film is insanely twisted and is definitely not for everyone. I was shaking during my viewing of this film and the impact that such a small film can have is astonishing to me. I was pulled in on what was one of the biggest suspense-filled horror rides I have witnessed in years. I felt every emotion given off by each and every character, and once this film hit the halfway mark, I was in belief that I was no longer watching a film. When a film can do that, you know it is brilliant. Heartless just may be one of the best suspense/horror flicks that I have ever seen!
  • FiLmCrAzY
    February 28, 2011
    FiLmCrAzY
    i cant say i actally understoood ths movie, maybe thats because i lost interest about half way in as it is slow paced.
    Eddie Marsan who actually stole the show as weapons man but only had 5minutes in the entire movie so that was a shame!
    I may have to give this movie a second c... read morehance i guess, the storyline was original and an interesting cooncept and i like it when movies are different so maybe worth the watch.
  • mumby1988
    February 12, 2011
    mumby1988
    With the exception of John Landis, Stanley Kubrick and Terrence Malick, there are few directors who can go more than ten years between films and still deliver the magic. But now Philip Ridley can be added to that illustrious list with Heartless, which comes fifteen years after hi... read mores mesmerising fairy tale, The Passion of Darkly Noon.

    It doesn't take long to realise that Heartless is something very special. Its visuals are superb, capturing the East End of London as something both gritty and fantastical - think Michael Powell meets Kidulthood by way of Guillermo Del Toro. The familiar shots of council estates, graffiti and street lamps are married to eerie backstreets, dark alleyways and a blood-red sunrise, as if the natural and the supernatural were intertwined in a dance of death. But it's not just the streets that ripple with the unreal: Papa B's flat in a disused tower block resembles the Pale Man's dining room in Pan's Labyrinth.

    Heartless is a film in which fantasy and reality violently collide, in which demons and the forces of evil are not just coexisting with real life, but infiltrating and manipulating it. The film owes a great debt to the story of Faustus, with Joseph Mawle's sepulchral Papa B standing in for the Devil and a dead-pan, no-nonsense Eddy Marsden channelling Mephistopheles as Weapons Man.

    But although it shares the central premise and morals of Faustus - you can do anything you like, but be careful what you wish for - the film departs from the legend in the precise relationship between the Devil and his eventual prey. Jamie, played brilliantly by Jim Sturgess, does not inherit or possess any of the palpable magic that Faustus does when he signs over his soul. In fact, he gets much more of a rum deal, becoming as much a victim as everyone around him. Rather than being able to channel demonic power to live his life the way he wants, his life is at the mercy of chaos, and through his life the Devil's aim of greater horror and panic becomes reality.

    Heartless is suffused with Ridley's trademark blend of religious allegory and fairy tales, a combination that is every bit as seamless as the visual marriage of magic and grittiness. As a genre piece, the film is an interesting pairing of the streetwise dialogue of Kidulthood (a fair comparison considering the presence of Noel Clarke) with the more poetic sensibilities of Guillermo Del Toro or Clive Barker. It begins unevenly as all these unlikely elements struggle to weave together, but it doesn't take long for the effect to become hypnotic.

    Because of its links to horror artists and directors, Heartless references a number of individual horror films; Ridley takes the various touches which crop up and re-forges them into something new. The character of She, a heavily tattooed gangster with a claw for one hand, hints back to the killer in Candyman: as in both Clive Barker's story and the film by Bernard Rose, the character is either the physical vessel of some supernatural evil or one of the keys to determine where the characters' sanity lies. There are also strong references to A Nightmare on Elm Street, particularly the Freddie Krueger slashes across AJ's chest and the scenes of Jamie being hurled violently against the ceiling by an unseen evil.

    But by far the closest companion to Heartless is Ridley's previous film, The Passion of Darkly Noon. Both revolve around central characters with a deeply warped view of the world: Darkly Noon is a young man indoctrinated into a fundamentalist Christian cult, and Jamie is implied to have a history of mental illness. Christian imagery is prominent in both films: Jamie's house is full of icons belonging to his late mother, and in Papa B's flat the lampshades on the walls cast shadows resembling the shape of a cross.

    Both Heartless and The Passion of Darkly Noon begin on relatively realistic ground and then pull us headlong into a terrifying world which is equal parts fairy tale, horror and fantasy. In the case of Darkly Noon (featuring a career-best performance by Brendan Fraser), what starts off as a story about indoctrination and a blinkered worldview that stunts development turns into a Grimm's fairy tale about sex, witchcraft and a climactic clash of ideals which is worthy of The Wicker Man. We begin believing that one side is deluded, then the other side, until eventually we don't know who to trust and have to just lose ourselves in it.

    While Heartless never quite reaches the levels of transcendent, euphoric terror which Ridley achieved there, Jamie doesn't exactly make it easy for us. There are any number of terrifying, earth-shattering moments which will make even the seasoned horror fun curl into the foetal position and pray for it to end.

    The most terrifying of these comes where Jamie has to stab a male prostitute and cut out his heart while he is still alive. Having chosen his victim and brought him back to his flat, Jamie reluctantly wraps him in cling-film in what his victim perceives to be an elaborate homosexual ritual. When Jim Sturgess pulls out the knife and we hear the hooker's muffled screams, we are thrust right into the horror that character is experiencing; we tense up and start to panic, desperate to escape and yet knowing we can't look away.

    Scenes like this are cleverly counterpointed by imagery which occurs earlier in the film. The precise demands placed upon Jamie regarding the nature of the murder are a symbol of his own status: he must cut out the heart of another, for he no longer has a heart himself. While he is more than capable of physical or erotic love, his desire for friendship and platonic love is ebbing away. The cling-filming is counterpointed by the beautiful moment of Jamie emerging from the cocoon of his own burnt flesh, with his heart-shaped birthmark nowhere to be seen.

    One of the key images in Heartless is that of fire and immolation. Ridley shoots flame like another character, with its own personality and powers. Just as there is a double meaning to hearts in the film, so fire is the means of both our hero's transformation and destruction. When Papa B hands him the Molotov cocktail and Jamie sets himself alight, the fire is cleansing him of his old self, like a furnace removing impurities from metal. But in the final scene, fire becomes the means to briefly reunite with his dead father - only in destruction does Jamie realise what he truly wanted and whom he truly loved.

    The one real flaw with Heartless is its big final twist, in which we are shown what was real and what was not. On the one hand, it works brilliantly, with all the different parties corresponding to figures in the real world, and it does deliver a sucker punch as we realise what Jamie has actually done. But there's still something unsatisfying about it in the same way that Shutter Island was unsatisfying. Because of the way the film is played, it has to come down on one side or the other, when as with Scorsese's work the more radical and haunting choice would have been to leave us hanging.

    Despite this quibble, Heartless is a truly great film and a welcome return to the big screen for Philip Ridley. While it never quite lives up to The Passion of Darkly Noon, it is a really stunning piece of work with haunting visuals and brilliant performances. Jim Sturgess excels in the central role, amply supported by gripping turns from Noel Clarke and Joseph Mawle, whose scene together on the rooftop is really harrowing. One only hopes we don't have to wait another 15 years for Ridley to return to our screens.
  • deano
    November 14, 2010
    deano
    Director Philip Ridley brings us a new style of horror. Mesmerizing and twisted, Heartless tries to appeal to our deepest senses - fear simply being one of them - by means of psychology. The "monster" in this so called horror drama, is not a monster at all but an inner pat... read moretern of what makes us humans; of what our feelings may turn us into.
    The performances were pretty good especially from Joseph Mawle, Eddie Marsan and his charismatic flavour and, of course, Jim Sturgess who proves once again that he is a British star on a dark sky. However I expected somewhat more from Clemence Poesy other than a lovely accent.
  • gator681
    March 7, 2012
    gator681
    In "Heartless," Jamie(Jim Sturgess) has been cursed since birth with a heart-shaped birthmark that scars half his face, dashing his dreams of being with a beautiful woman like Tia(Clemence Poesy). At least, he makes friends easily enough, like with A.J.(Noel Clarke), his new nei... read moreghbor. And then there is Jamie's loving mother(Ruth Sheen) who accompanies him to the cemetery on the tenth anniversary of his father's(Timothy Spall) death, just before witnessing her burning to death at the hands of a vicious gang.

    Like Neil's Gaiman's 'Neverwhere' and Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant novels, "Heartless" shows a dark fantasy version of London that exists just below the surface, suggesting the world is really much weirder than we ever suspected. Plus, there is a good cast on hand, including three members of the Mike Leigh Repertory Company; of which Eddie Marsan has a scene stealing turn. But as creepy as the first half is, the movie turns increasingly campy in its second half. Come to think of it, except for thematically, both halves feel like different movies entirely. And it is not until a cop-out of an ending that everything gets linked together, however tenuously.

View All Heartless Reviews

Critic Reviews

Gary Goldstein
December 9, 2010
Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

A highly imaginative if often darkly disturbing work that even at its most seemingly outlandish remains intriguing and involving. Full Review

Kyle Smith
November 19, 2010
Kyle Smith, New York Post

"Heartless" is an uneasy mixture of B-movie shocks, social commentary and sentimentality that shows a potent imagination at work. Full Review

Manohla Dargis
November 18, 2010
Manohla Dargis, New York Times

It doesn't go anywhere special or much of anywhere, though it goes there in appreciably icky style. Full Review

Nick Pinkerton
November 16, 2010
Nick Pinkerton, Village Voice

With erratic success, Heartless tries a number of different veins.. but it's on firmest footing as a macabre comedy. Full Review

Joe Leydon
October 27, 2010
Joe Leydon, Variety

There's more mood than matter here, but suspenseful atmospherics effectively distract from minor plot holes. Full Review

John Gholson
February 9, 2012
John Gholson, Cinematical

While ambitious, 'Heartless' derails in a big way, stacking the deck with weird moments intended to give it some kind of cult status, without considering that films specifically designed to be "cult" ... Full Review

Scott Weinberg
January 9, 2011
Scott Weinberg, FEARnet

Earns points for combining two sub-genres (revenge and occult) into one surprisingly original tale of violence and redemption. Full Review

Beth Accomando
December 3, 2010
Beth Accomando, KPBS.org

Heartless isn't as dazzling as The Reflecting Skin but it's nice to hear from Ridley again after all these years. Full Review

Stan Hall
December 2, 2010
Stan Hall, Oregonian

"Heartless" is a bit of a jumble, especially in its last third. But it's got a distinct tone, contrasting romance and even outright sentimentality with urban dread and a few nasty visuals. Full Review

Anton Bitel
December 1, 2010
Anton Bitel, Little White Lies

an ambitious, disorienting film that plays fast and loose as much with its own generic identity (urban horror, social realism, morality drama, black comedy, psychothriller and fairytale allegory) as w... Full Review

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Cast

More Like This

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

  • Irreversible
    Irreversible (100%)
  • Donnie Darko
    Donnie Darko (91%)
  • The Krays
    The Krays (96%)

More Movies like Heartless

Facts

Submit a Fact | View All
    • Jamie: Digital photography is a rough sketch... but film? Film is like...
    • Weapons Man: Ah, my wife would like that... she's got me to redecorate our bathroom. Wife wants it done out with gold taps and marble floor. That's fake gold and marble, needless to say. Still cost a fucking arm and a leg, though. Not to my taste. Looks like the fucking Palace of Versailles, want my opinion. Soaks herself morning, noon and night. Lavender and Bergamot bubble bath. She says, "I feel like Marie Antoinette." I said, "Well, you know what happened to her, don't ya?" She don't. She will. I've made plans. Certain kid I know's a dab hand with a chainsaw. Beautiful weapon. And talking of weapons... Business!
Submit a Fact | View All

Heartless : Watch Free on TV

Heartless Trivia

  • In what movie did Jhonny Depp travel to capture the Heart of a Heartless man?  Answer »
  • He played a heartless sea captain, a vampire lord, a zombie-fighter's step-father, and an architect of planets who was reluctant to reveal his name.  Answer »
  • I have been an English author struggling to learn Portuguese, an introverted Regency landlord, UK's next prime minister and a heartless English Lord in the Elizabethan era.  Answer »
  • Who says Cor Jerma is heartless in 24 : Redemption ?  Answer »
More Heartless Trivia

Movie Quizzes

No quizzes for Heartless. Want to create one?

Video Clips

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

Meet Other Fans

Add Heartless to favorites

Recent News

No recent headlines. Got one?

Recent Lists

Make a List |

View All Lists

Most Popular Skin

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?