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Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The Three Acts:The initial tableau: Jamie's face is dominated by large birthmarks, plural. The largest one covers his whole left eye area. Jamie does 'real' photography with film, and chemical development where he works with his brother. While trolling for photo opportunities at night, he runs afoul of some bipedal reptilians, who look like gangsters, while they kill two people and set them on fire. Jamie lives with his mother. AJ is Jamie's new neighbor; for lack of other candidates, AJ hopes to become Jamie's friend. Jamie's father George is 10 years dead, but still has a presence in his life. Jamie seems quite alienated by his life, his deformities, his job, is living arrangement, and his lack of prospects with women.Delineation of conflicts: This is somewhat difficult to describe. Why? Because the protagonist seems to be insane. Just how much of this is real? It's hard to get interested in characters when it is not clear what is real and what is feverish imaginings. Let us suppose that what is presented is real. Jamie gets a gun to protect himself after the gang beats the hell out of him and burns his mother alive. The reptiles rake AJ's abdomen with a deep claw attack. The whole setup is to justify Jamie's descent into cooperation with dark forces to solve his self-perceived problems. Jamie would like to have female companionship, marriage, and children. How is that going to happen? Does the dark pact with Papa B help out this problem? Can he back out?If the protagonist is insane, on the other hand, one hopes the conflict in his mind ends before the movie does. Resolution: The protagonist is a broken toy. The usual resolution for broken toys is that they stop working.

Jamie lives in London with his mother and his father died where he was a child. He had the misfortune to be born with a mark in shape of a heart on his face and he has many other marks on his body, so he is mocked by others when he leaves his house. Soon discovers that some strange masked mens are making havoc on the streets and one night returning home along with his mother she is killed by these thugs. He wants to revenge her and is introduced to a weird and creepy man named Papa B and finds about him that he is nobody else then the devil and the guys on the street are his slaves. He makes a pact with him in witch the marks on him will disappear and could have a chance to be loved by a girl in exchange for a little favor from him. He accepts not knowing that the devil doesn't always play fair and now he must kill someone for him and also be afraid for his own life.The movie will surprise even those who are not fans of this genre with his uniqueness. It's dark, a little scary, has some scenes that will reminds of "Dahmer" and "The Devil's Advocate" and even though the message of the film is not necessarily a positive one, for me it worked.

I really liked the idea of a horror movie set in East London - where, coincidentally, I live. Seeing Jim Sturgess' character Jamie mooching around streets that I walk on my way to work was a lot of fun. And Philip Ridley attempts to do something different with the genre, trying to mix supernatural and social conscience. It kind of almost works, but like so many movies in this subject-space, it all goes a bit to hell-in-a-handbasket in the final reel.For me the ending is too much of a cop-out. I was hoping Ridley was going to come up with a better solution to the story than what we got. Very disappointing for the "demons" to be just hoodie, ASBO thugs after all. So I was left thinking that Papa B and Belle were just figments of Jamie's imagination. Now maybe that wasn't what Ridley was trying to put over, but that was what I was getting.What we're left with is a Scooby-Doo type story, where the demons of Bethnal Green just turned out to be "old man Clanton, the creepy caretaker in a mask."And, Philip, you'd have gotten away with it, to, if it hadn't been (etc, etc) ...

I don't mind a film where the ending is left open for interpretation or ambiguity causes an internal dialog and we need to delve deeper in the movie for answers.I felt that Heartless was too weak here. There were many variables and unexplained characters and motives. What was the little girl? I have 3-4 opinions on who she was, but those are just too many to keep the movie flowing.I've just read through other's opinions and reviews. I would love to hear the definitive answer so I could better judge this movie.Acting was good with Sturgess being able to carry well. I liked the setting and mood.Worth viewing but you have more questions than answers.