Enjoy From Hell as a fictional romp....but what a shame it offers us nothing new on the murders

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2002)

Not since Michael Caine donned the garb of a Victorian police inspector for a 1988 mini-series has there been a decent stab at a Jack the Ripper film.

So quite why the Hughes brothers decided to remake the old ITV version is a mystery to me.
While From Hell successfully creates the requisite dark and foreboding atmosphere, it lazily relies on the generation old and long-discredited Stephen Knight theory as to the killer's identity.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with the case has heard whodoneit according to this legend, so it would have been a refreshing change to see the production team plump for a different suspect altogether, preferably one whose candidacy wasn't disproved nearly thirty years ago.

Because lest anyone leave the cinema thinking that the Ripper might indeed have been the tall-hatted, caped figure who descends elegantly from a coach in From Hell, be assured that Stephen Knight was found to have fabricated the only, tenuous evidence for his fantasies the moment serious researchers starting investigating his work.
And although fairly credible suspects such as Tumblety and William Bury have been identified, our best guess as to the killer's identity is still that he was a nameless, psychotic misfit who lived somewhere in the East of London, though not necessarily on the doorstep of the murders, and who managed to escape the attentions of the contemporary police, who were not used to dealing with the modern serial killer: the murderer of strangers.
Nevertheless, there are some strong things in the favour of this movie. The performances of Depp, and indeed Heather Graham, for one. (I only noticed one brief moment when Graham's accent faltered, although it is interesting to think that the real Mary Kelly was brought up in Wales - try wrapping your tongue round that accent, Heather.) I also enjoyed Robbie Coltrane's turn as the phlegmatic Sergeant Godley, and each of the circle of "unfortunates" picked off by the Ripper gives us an acting masterclass. The relationship between the whores (as they refer to themselves) seems genuine and warm, even if the characters they play did not in fact know one another, and I also really believed that Inspector Abberline and his Sergeant had a solid relationship and cared about each other, making for a poignant moment at the close of events.
The effort to recreate the actual sites of the murders is another thing From Hell has going for it, and it would be churlish to note that the brothers have taken certain liberties when it comes to the details of the killings.
Take From Hell for what it is, then, and enjoy it as a fictional romp. But what a shame then the careful attention displayed in the production values of this film could not have been lavished on a script that offered the cinema-going public something new to excite them about this curious chapter of criminal history.
Three stars out of five.