Now where have I seen this kind of thing before...

Rating: Null/10 (3 July 2002)

I didn't know at the time that "From Hell" is based on a comic book, but in retrospect, it's obvious. It's imbued throughout with what I call "comicbook darkness".
You know the kind of thing I mean. Whenever you pick up a modern comic book (which, admittedly, isn't often in my case) it turns out to have been written by someone obsessed with trying to capture the same rich characterisations one encounters in literature and cinema. But rich characters are only possible in literature because of such things as internal monologues, and because the author is free to simply TELL us - taking as much time about it as he needs to - whatever it is he wants us to know. Rich characters are possible in cinema because we get to see actual actors with actual human faces, and because directors have almost continuous control over the degree to which any given detail may be stressed.
These devices aren't available to comic book artists, who, as it happens, CAN'T create rich characters, by ANY means. It's just one of the limitations of their craft. It's a limitation they share with oral storytellers, librettists, animators, composers and choreographers, so there's no reason whatever for them to be ashamed of it - but for some reason, they ARE ashamed, and so while they continue to draw clear, flat, action characters, they make a ghastly attempt to ape Dostoyevsky by having these characters brood all the time. In an attempt to create "depth" they give their heroes artificial flaws and cover their world with artificial grime.
That's what we have here. The hero is addicted to opium not because he would be but because it's the kind of comicbook detail designed to let us know that the authors are being all adult and sophisticated. Characters are cynical not because it's in their nature but because it's not - because when a character acts or speaks against his or her nature, it is (so the theory goes) "layered". I'll admit I'm having a hard time coming up with instances. You've either noticed the kind of phoney, unearned darkness of modern comic books, or you haven't. If you've noticed it you'll find the film is saturated with it. But it's in the spirit in which the story is told rather than in any particular detail.
No complaints about the plot, and in the final half hour or so, it actually starts to work as a film. The trouble is it hadn't done so AT ALL until then.