From Hell

Rating:
Summary: This is a good or a bad film?
Review: If you don`t know anything about the history of Jack The Ripper is a good film, but if you know is a bad film. Jack The Ripper it`s a true story not a fiction like this.

Rating:
Summary: From Hell Watching This Movie
Review: Depp is miscast as a shy, dim witted, idiot savant English detective in this "Hollywoodization" of the Jack Ripper scenario. He attempts to keep an English accent but doesn't realize he sounds nowhere near that tonality. The movie, for the most part, is quite boring and doesn't offer anything significant except loud music, gory MTV style editing and too many whores in the streets of London to look at. What we have here is an experienced director (the Huges brothers) who do not even know where to begin in this mess. Not recommended.



Rating:
Summary: But to lie in cold obstruction and to rot...
Review: Aside from taking a fresh and unique approach to the old mysteries of Jack The Ripper, From Hell delivers a gracefully languid storyline peppered with brutal killings and interesting musings into an old fashioned culture.

Inspector Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp) has a unique gift, a psychic ability to see murders in his opium dreams. Because of this talent, he is assigned to the case of a brutally murdered prostitute along with his partner, Sergeant Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane). His suspicions turn away from the local gang of pimps and thugs, and towards a more educated and upper-class perpetrator as more and more girls are methodically butchered.

Abberline wins the confidence of one of the slightly more refined prostitutes, Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), and uses her knowledge of the dead girls to uncover the unlikely murderer.

From Hell definitely has its faults, a sometimes weak script and a far-fetched assumption of the identity and background of Jack The Ripper, but makes up for those faults with its stunning visuals and moody atmosphere.
Using subtle photography rather than graphical violence in the murder scenes, it leaves a lingering taste in one's mouth that is nonetheless bloody and haunting.

Depp plays Abberline with brilliant panache, a man who still cares but is void of the usual emotional swamps most humans swim in, evident in the scene where the coroner is retching but Abberline coldly and methodically examines the mutilated corpse. I love cold characters. Heather Graham is a beautiful woman, but not a very good actress. However, her character of Mary Kelly is probably the best performance she had done, in spite of the weak accent attempted.

There are also interesting notes to study while taking in the lush photography, the realism of the opium dens, the early lobotomies performed, a brief presentation of the Elephant Man, along with the cultural notions of the 1880's that well-bred and moneyed people simply could not be capable of such types of brutality.

The time frame is well done and interesting in that it also exposes the religious persecution of certain sects, not to mention total disregard for the prostitutes and those poor souls considered to be beneath the genteel societies notice or care. One's birth class stands out far above their deeds, and propriety rules the day. And ruling the propriety are a secret sect of Freemasons, answerable only to themselves and powerful enough to stop Abberline's investigation.

Perhaps because I am a very visual person I enjoyed the film more than many others did, but I encourage you to look beneath the slow, still waters of the movie's general flow, and pluck out the tasty treats in the form of interesting notes and speculations, and savor them for a bit. It was really at that point that From Hell went from four to five stars for me.

Languid, graceful, gory, suspenseful, atmospheric, and moody, don't miss out on this great sleeper film. Enjoy!


Rating:
Summary: Problems to get past
Review: I loved this movie, but there were four problems that made it difficult to love.

First, the character, Mary Kelly, is a whore who apparently never works. You see her friends working, and even witness the transaction between a whore and her trick. But Mary Kelly is clean and nice and somehow manages to make a living as a whore without having any customers. I mean, I understand that one of the main characters can't be depicted as this disgusting, filthy, diseased whore, because no one would want to identify with her (whether they actually did or not is another story), but the way they sanitized it was ridiculous.

Second, the ending was just plain stupid. They set it up so that this poor little French whore is killed in Mary Kelly's place (I don't care if I ruined it for you), and that Mary Kelly escapes back to Ireland where she raises a little orphaned girl. This made me so angry I couldn't stand it. First of all, the little French whore was just as sweet and nice as Mary Kelly was, but they make it look like it's somehow OK that the French whore was killed - it's NOT OK to kill off a whore just because she isn't your focus. That in no way reduces the horror of the act itself. ("Besides, there's no reason to kill [whores] - most of them are already dead inside.") It was a stupid and endlessly irritating plot "twist." I'll bet some Hollywood dim-wit forced them to tack that on. No wonder the movie failed miserably at the box office.

Third, this took place in 1888, and then Mary escapes home to Ireland, where she raises her friend's little girl - you see her, looking like she's reached maybe six years old or so. Well, guess what? The Irish Potato Famine started in 1889, so Mary the Sanitary Whore, and baby Alice would have starved to death long before Alice got to be six years old. Now, it makes sense to bet that Americans don't know their history, but still, it was schlocky and melodramatic and just plain pathetic. I just couldn't deal with how stupid it was.

Fourth, there was a tacked-on love story. I won't comment any further than to say that love stories or love-subplots ruin more movies than they save.

However (and I know how ridiculous this is going to sound after all the negative stuff I just said), other than these problems the movie was pretty good. There are these seriously disturbing scenes in a mental hospital, and it's fun to watch Depp parade a whore around with him through an art gallery, offending all the "respectable" christian-types. The dialogue is pretty decent as well. I tend to shy away from movies set in this period - like Bram Stoker's Dracula - because modern writers can't seem to reproduce the dialect with any sort of accuracy. I mean, this flick doesn't sound completely authentic, but it's really good relative to other movies set in this time, and there are even some decent jokes and wise @ss remarks ("I can suck the Thames dry"). Also, the movie is beautiful to look at. I don't know anything about the art of movie making, but whoever was responsible for the background scenes and camera work did an excellent job.

What's more is that the plot, aside from the tacked-on love story, is interesting. It isn't exactly accurate insofar as the details of the case, but at least it's compelling and somewhat plausible (as opposed to the travesty of Mary Kelly's never turning a single trick).

So, if you can deal with the above mentioned problems, the DVD is worth your money. Even though these things bothered me more than they might have bothered most people, I own the DVD, and like the movie very much. I know that sounds hypocritical, but I don't care. That's how I feel about it.

Insofar as the second disc, and the special features, I can't comment. I don't really care about that stuff, and don't own a single DVD with special features that I've ever bothered to watch.

Rating:
Summary: An entirely new spin on the legend...
Review: For fans of Patricia Corwell's book Portrait of a Killer, this is not the same treatment. In the 2-disc set, the directors did acknowledge her efforts and explain their own vision.

This is a work of fiction for entertainment purposes. In that respect, it works. The entire fiml is mired deep in a sense of impending doom. The camerawork is spectacular, with the full length of the movie being very engaging to the viewer.

For horror fans, Jack the Ripper buffs, or Johnny Depp fans, you will enjoy this movie.