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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
From Hell
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  out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
2½ stars out of 4
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Jack the Ripper, who ritualized the slaughter of women in Victorian
London, was the first tabloid-sensational serial killer. This horrific twist on
the old tale begins in 1888 as Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp), a deeply troubled,
opium-addicted Cockney police Inspector, and his long-suffering assistant
(Robbie Coltrane) examine the butchered body of a prostitute in the seedy
streets of Whitechapel. "No Englishman could commit this crime!" snorts a
mutton-chopped Scotland Yard official (Ian Richardson), asserting that the
culprit must be one of Buffalo Bill's touring Native Americans, an Oriental, or
a Jew. But Abberline's opium-induced visions, his affection for a street-walker
(Heather Graham), and conversations with the Royal physician (Ian Holm) lead him
to Buckingham Palace and the top-secret Freemasons, who conspire to protect a
member. Indeed, Saucy Jack, as he called himself, is a black-cloaked, top-hatted
nobleman who lured starving women to their death with grapes and cocaine-laced
absinthe. Twin directors Allen and Albert Hughes rely on Martin Child's dark,
murky, fog-drenched production design and Peter Deming's cinematography to
distinguish Terry Hayes and Rafael Yglesias's trite, formulaic tale, based on
Alan Moore's graphic novel. And the title refers to the return address on a
taunting letter from the killer. As obsessive Abberline, Johnny Depp relishes
his incapacitating torment, relying on spells of clairvoyance for investigative
insight, while Heather Graham and her well-groomed cohorts are remarkably free
of the filth, grime and stench that characterized the squalid streets. On the
Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "From Hell" is a grim, gruesome, gore-filled 6,
making this blood-drenched opium dream more of a cinematic trick than a
Halloween treat.
Copyright © 2001 Susan Granger
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