"May my throat be cut and my tongue ripped out"..Yeah,right.

Rating: 6/10 (26 February 2009)

Personally I thought "From Hell" was a quite entertaining exposition of the least likely of the "Ripper" myths.How much more exciting our Royal family would be if one of their predecessors had been a disease-ravaged serial killer;still,you can't have everything.Then there's the Freemasons..........A "Society with Secrets" as they refer to themselves rather than a "Secret Society".Ho hum.Certainly their influence is very strong in the Metropolitan Police even today - some might have said their malign influence............and was no doubt at least as powerful in late Victorian times - but I can't help feeling if they'd been responsible for the Ripper murders they would have left absolutely no clues. So it's only a movie,then,not a history lesson.Obviously a lot of money has been spent and the net result is quite compelling,its whole being rather better than the sum of its parts. I think the fact that it's derived from a comic book should have alerted most people that the characters might not be very,er,believable. Mr Johnny Depp makes a Byronic Inspector Abberline.Mr Robbie Coltrane plays the same fat bloke he always plays.Various English thesps slum courageously and exit quickly counting the money. Don't take it seriously for a minute and it's quite fun.