FROM HELL - DVD review

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.

A couple of concluding observations: First, the British accents, which differ from actor to actor, and the wide dynamic range of the soundtrack, which renders voices at times too quiet, make hearing every plot detail difficult. I would advise keeping one finger on the volume control and another poised on the repeat button. Second, the film's final resolution, the denouement, seems too facile and even anticlimactic. Nor is it particularly new or original. The Hughes Brothers apparently chose it because it's popular, not because it's necessarily right. I found the solution shaky at best, but at least it ties everything together into a neat little package.

Video:
In terms of picture quality, everything is gorgeous. The film has been THX mastered in an approximately 2.11:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, conveying an image of superb clarity and definition. The combination of bright, opulent colors in daylight scenes and dark, dingy, dimly lit, rain-drenched, fog-enshrouded alleys and passageways in nighttime scenes are captured with equal ease. Variations and gradations of hue and shade are also well rendered, with virtually no grain, line wavering, or other digital transfer artifacts.

Audio:
The audio, conveyed via Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1, holds up its end of the bargain as well. In DD 5.1, one will hear excellent use of the surrounds to create an all-encompassing sonic environment. London streets come alive with the ambient noises of horses, birds, rain, wind, rats, and people. It's just the kind of sound the film needs to complement the reality of the set designs and to create the overall illusion of nineteenth century England.

Extras:
Fox's Directors' Limited Edition set comes on two discs and provides enough details about both the filmmaking and the real-life Ripper to satisfy movie fans and Ripper fans for hours. Disc one contains the widescreen presentation of the film itself, the Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 soundtracks, English, French, and Spanish spoken languages, and English subtitles. The two major extras on disc one are an audio commentary with directors Albert and Allen Hughes, screenwriter Rafael Yglesias, cinematographer Peter Deming, and actor Robbie Coltrane; and twenty-one deleted scenes, including an alternate ending, all with optional director comments. Finally, there is a THX Optimizer group of audiovisual calibration tests and thirty-two scene selections.

Disc two contains the majority of the bonus items, and most of them are worth watching. The primary attraction is a documentary called " Six Degrees of Separation," thirty-plus minutes long, that not only provides primary information about the real Ripper murders but optional supplemental material accessed via magnifying-glass icons that appear on the screen from time to time. Next, there's a twelve-minute featurette on "Production Design," in which production designer Martin Childs shows us some of the locations and sets used for the film. The crew went to Prague to shoot most of the interior scenes and built an elaborate replica of the Whitechapel District in a field just outside the city. Needless to say, the actual murder sites were exactingly represented. After that, there's a book-to-film comparison, showing how the graphic novel by Allen Moore and Eddie Campbell inspired the motion picture. Then, there's another featurette, "Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder," ten minutes of everything you ever wanted to know about the liqueur. Following that is yet another featurette, this one an eight-minute "Tour of the Murder Sites," hosted by the Hughes brothers, wherein they take the viewer around the enormous set they built of the various murder locations. Then, there's a fourteen-minute promotional featurette titled "A View From Hell," hosted by Heather Graham. The most interesting bit of news in it for me: The Hughes boys were fascinated by Jack the Ripper ever since their youth when they saw an old Ripper episode of the Leonard Nimoy series "In Search of" that scared the pants off them. So, thank Mr. Spock for "From Hell." The disc concludes with two theatrical trailers, a widescreen one for this film and a pan-and-scan affair for another Fox title.

Parting Thoughts:
Is "From Hell" the definitive story of Jack the Ripper? Surely not. It isn't even the scariest or most complete film on the subject because the case will probably never be closed. Of all the possible crime scenarios, the Hughes Brothers have chosen the most popular and, in some ways, the most controversial one as the basis for their film. 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. I dunno; maybe I'm just morbidly minded. I liked this show. It won't have you jumping out of your seat, but it will surely make you squirm.