FilmBlather.com

"We're in hell."

It looks like the emperor has new clothes yet again, and the tailors are the obviously talented Allen and Albert Hughes, brothers who made a name for themselves with "urban" dramas like Dead Presidents and Menace II Societies and are "branching out" with the glorified slasher flick From Hell. There are two explanations for what went wrong, as I see it, and they're equally egregious: either they thought they were making an art film and were simply mistaken, or they wanted us to think that they were making one and miscalculated. The paper-thin plot is fruitlessly camouflaged by a deluge of camera tricks that would make even Oliver Stone blush, and the movie itself buckles under the pressure. There's nothing wrong with making a crude genre more "elegant," but there's no need to make a boring film in the process.

The advertising was intentionally vague about what the movie was actually about, but the cat has now been let out of the bag: From Hell is a revisionist look at the reign of Jack the Ripper who, in the late 19th century, terrorized London's prostitutes by gutting seemingly random ones and taking their organs. The authorities never discovered his identity. The film centers on Inspector Fred Abberline who, when he isn't getting high on opium, is a star detective who is known for making what one character terms "brilliant guesses that turn out to be right." He is assigned to the case when it is still thought to be a run-of-the-mill series of murders -- perhaps the local street gangs running amok -- but it is soon discovered that the killer is an educated man, and a rich one.

In his investigation, he gets unexpectedly close to the woman he believes will be the Ripper's next victim: an uncommonly beautiful whore named Mary Kelly, and played with typical airheaded vacantness by Heather Graham, who I am now convinced is a hack (yeah, I liked her in Boogie Nights too, but that may have had something to do with the fact that she played a porn star on rollerskates). I'd complain that the romance was barely developed, but I'm too happy that the film didn't end with a jubilant kiss.

From Hell does have one stroke of genius to be proud of: the technique of following the Ripper's driver without ever seeing the murderer himself is its only effective means of generating suspense. But the movie, unsatisfied with the enigma that is Jack, insists on postulating a solution to the mystery; one that, sadly, follows Roger Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters which states that in a mystery, the character who seems unnecessary to the plot will be the killer.

The irony is that Jack the Ripper may as well have worn a mask and popped out of closets wielding a knife. That's the level of the plot, but the filmmaking has higher pretensions. The Hughes Brothers throw the book at us, including every film-school sleight-of-camera gimmick they could reasonably look up in three-plus months of filming. Seldom do we see movies this self-indulgent, unless they're directed by Terrence Malick (though this one, it should be said, is still superior to The Thin Red Line).

There is so much evident talent at work here that I'm surprised the movie still managed to be this awful. Allen and Albert are enviably skilled helmers who, I think, just need to calm down, and Depp is as amazing as he always is in one of the less demanding roles of his recent career. In spite of them, From Hell fails to quicken the heartbeat.