Thanks to the strongly evocative sets and persuasive acting, I found the tale gripping, even though I had heard and seen the story many times before.
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Look out! Jack is back. Again. Theories on who Jack the Ripper was and why he committed his horrific crimes are a dime a dozen. What's more, practically every theory has been explored in a score of previous movies on the subject. If you're like me and you've seen a lot of these films and followed the latest conjectures on various cable TV shows, you'll be slightly disappointed that the 2001 Hughes Brothers film, "From Hell," doesn't shed much new light on the matter. Also, if you're looking forward to a really scary film about the famous serial killer, you'll find few frights in this new offering.
On the other hand, if you're interested in an engaging crime drama, whether or not you already know everything there is to know about the Ripper, and if you think you might be attracted to one of the best re-creations of late nineteenth-century London ever filmed, with plenty of period atmosphere and loads of dark, brooding sets, "From Hell" may be just your movie. I kept wishing the story offered more, but what I got was better than what most prior Ripper films delivered, and I'm not just talking about the second disc of extras in this Directors' Limited Edition DVD set.
According to the prologue, in 1888 Jack the Ripper wrote, "One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the twentieth century." Cut to a gorgeously rendered opening shot of the Whitechapel District of London--a slum populated by the poor masses, plus assorted prostitutes, pimps, and lowlifes--the camera gliding effortlessly, gracefully among and through the area's streets and buildings and alleyways.
Now, a moment for reflection at the outset. I found the stylized, at times flashy direction of Albert and Allen Hughes ("Dead Presidents," "Menace II Society"), which is bolstered by a big, portentous musical track, both a help and a hindrance to the effectiveness of the narrative (based on the dark graphic novel by Allen Moore and Eddie Campbell). On the plus side, there's a continual tone of mystery as segments of the story line are interwoven, keeping the viewer in doubt until the very end about who the Ripper actually is and why exactly he's committing his crimes. However, this interlaced approach is sometimes done without regard to the viewer's being able easily to follow the various plot threads. In the end, the combination of fancy camerawork and intertwined stories comes close to being too much of a good thing, periodically emphasizing the directors' style over the movie's substance. By the halfway mark in an over two-hour film, things begin devolving into showy display and technique almost for their own sake. Take, for instance, a shot of the hero soaking his face in a bowl of water, filmed from the bottom of the bowl. The first time it's used, it works. The second time we see it (admittedly for a different purpose), it seems redundant. Still, despite my grousing, there are enough creative moments to outweigh the mediocre or repetitious ones, and, overall, they provide a fascinating visual experience.
Back to the story, where we meet the principal characters of the drama: Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), a beautiful young harlot; Scotland Yard Inspector Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp), a drug-addicted investigator assigned to the case; Sgt. Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane), the Inspector's right-hand man; and Sir William Gull (Ian Holm), a prominent physician to the Royal Family. Ms. Graham is perhaps more beautiful than her real-life counterpart, but she is appropriately tough and gritty in the role and comes off convincingly. Depp may be in danger of being typecast as an offbeat cop, having played one now in several different movies, including his eighteenth-century policeman in "Sleepy Hollow" and his twentieth-century investigator into the supernatural in "The Ninth Gate." Well, at least he's got the last three centuries covered. Here he plays a fellow who has prescient, psychic dreams of murders before they are committed, so his is a good profession to be in. It helps, too, that he's skilled at good, old, straightforward deductive reasoning. There is little actual depth to Abberline's part, but Depp plays it with his usual confidence.
Costar Coltrane looks more immense than he did in "Harry Potter" as the giant Hagrid; maybe he put on the weight for the "Potter" role, but it looks to me like he'd better not get much more involved in such weighty parts or he's going to be in for some serious medical problems. Anyway, he is always good, lending an air of believability to the proceedings. Then, there's Holm, an exemplary actor in everything he does, and we can well believe in his character's skills as a surgeon and his slightly bonkers attitude toward medicine in a scene where he looks approvingly upon the administration of a primitive lobotomy.
I should mention next that the film gets a justified R rating due to its strong depiction of gore, violence, sex, profanity, and nudity. The Ripper is aptly named, his crimes among the most brutal ever committed. His half dozen victims, all prostitutes, had their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated, sometimes dismembered, most often with their internal and reproductive organs removed. All of this in real life was very precisely and methodically done, and in the movie it is frequently displayed in full view of the audience. Ghastly sights, but they're enacted as realistically as possible in accordance with all known historical facts, police drawings, and news pictures of the day. The Hughes Brothers are sticklers for the accuracy of their details.
As the investigation proceeds, it's hard to say who the worse monsters are: the Ripper himself or the thugs and pimps who prey upon the Whitechapel prostitutes. Meanwhile, the suspect list increases: Is this most bloody serial killer an itinerant lunatic? A mad butcher or even a frenzied doctor? A vengeful Freemason? A high-ranking police officer? A prominent member of the Royal Household? Or could there have been a conspiracy of major proportions involving almost everybody? One thing is sure from the historical record: At some point in the real investigation, things were suddenly hushed up. The "why" may remain a mystery forever.
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