Starring: Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley, David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Ben Chaplin, Ray Winstone Director: William Monahan

    WRITER William Monahan’s directorial debut, an urban crime drama-meets-Notting Hill love story, boasts all the fundamentals: a strong cast, interesting characters, nifty dialogue, a gritty London setting, and plenty of plot potential. Too much of everything, as it turns out. Lead Colin Farrell’s bewildered face is only a hint of what’s to come, and soon enough “London Boulevard” is veering dementedly off the tracks at the speed of the train from “Unstoppable.”

    While an increasingly barmy plot peopled by crazies isn’t necessarily a box office deterrent, it’s hard to imagine anybody walking away from this without scratching their heads. Rich technical credits and a top-line cast may attract audiences and pique cable interest initially, but “London Boulevard” is a curiosity at best.

    Farrell, as recently released criminal Mitchel, brings to mind what LBJ said about Gerald Ford walking and chewing gum as he attempts to act while delivering a London accent. While the effort adds a little frisson to events, it also appears to have stunned the actor, leading to the conclusion that his character may have taken one too many beatings around the head.

    After his stretch for GBH, Mitchel is met at Pentonville prison by his dodgy mate Billy (Ben Chaplin). Mitchel wants to go straight, but takes Billy up on his offer of a suspicious apartment in Kennington. One thing leads to another, and soon the Savile Row-suited Mitchel is being offered a job as gardener-cum-minder to Keira Knightley’s Charlotte, a reclusive Sunset Boulevard-y actress, in her lush Notting Hill house.

    “If it wasn’t for Monica Bellucci she’d be the most raped actress in European cinema,” says Charlotte’s “polymath butler” Jordan, played with aplomb by David Thewlis in what must be the daftest screen role in years, although Anna Friel as Mitchel’s slutty sister Briony gives him a run for his money.

    If Monahan of “The Departed,” going behind the camera with his own adaptation of the novel by Ken Bruen, had left it at that, “London Boulevard “could possibly have massaged its way into becoming a workable commercial prospect. But no, Ray Winstone as London crime boss Gant roars in to up the ante.

    With little new to bring to the part of a deranged London mobster, Winstone’s appearance is a clear signal that all bets are now off. The actor plays a sadistic, suit-wearing amalgam of all his previous Cockney gangster characters, and he squares off against Colin Farrell in a scene at the Criterion Brasserie in which Monahan effectively torches his own film.

    The movie is now being screened in Hong Kong.

    (SD-Agencies)