Intense... and unforgettable

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2006)

*SPOILERS From Hell*
London, 1888.
Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp) is a Scotland Yard cop with terrible losses (pregnant wife) in the past, an addiction to opium in the present and a prodigious gift of precognition, who is assigned, along with his colleague (Robbie Coltrane) to investigate the case of a serial killer of prostitutes... who calls himself Jack The Ripper.
As he digs deeper and deeper into the case, he meets Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) whose friends are dropping like flies under The Ripper's knife, and ends up falling in love with her.
But The Ripper is closing in on her... who is he, and why is he doing this? There are some signs that point to the Queen and/or someone close to her being involved in the murders...
The Hughes Brothers have managed to make a gripping movie (I haven't read the source material - a graphic novel - so I can't vouch for a perfect adaptation), not static and interested in long, boredom-filled scenes, but fast paced, intriguing and, especially true to how the Whitechapel murder scenes really were (they recreated Whitechapel in Hungary - or was it Romania? - to be as accurate as possible).
And Depp, as usual, soars above his very good colleagues, making his Abberline as human as he can be, a man of words and action at the same time.
From Hell: 10/10.