Stylish, Intriguing, Slightly Barmy Jack The Ripper Thriller

Rating: 6/10 (1 December 2006)

In London in 1888, the enigmatic Inspector Frederick Abberline is called in to investigate brutal murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel, in which the victims have been butchered with surgical precision. At a loss to explain or prevent the murders, Abberline is taunted by letters and clues from the killer, whom the papers have dubbed Jack The Ripper ...
The Hughes Brothers are unlikely candidates to direct a Victorian Gothic drama, but their film is an excellent mix of style, authentic atmosphere and entertaining mystery. It starts a little shakily, introducing too many odd characters too quickly, but soon settles into a dark, chilling depiction of the notorious Whitechapel Murderer. Its trump card is the fantastic production design (shot in Prague) by Martin Childs; a sprawl of dank, grimy East End cobbled streets and alleys, pubs and flophouses, all backlit by fabulous matte paintings by Syd Dutton and Bill Taylor. It's a living, breathing, nineteenth-century slum and it transports us to the world of the story. The problem with a movie about unsolved crimes of course is that it has to give us an answer; this film goes for one of the much-disputed conspiracy theories that the Duke of Clarence (Queen Victoria's grandson and second in line to the throne) had a legitimate child with a Catholic streetwalker, and that Sir William Gull (his physician) lobotomised the mother and killed anyone who had witnessed the marriage (other popular but unlikely theories are that the killer was the Duke himself, or a painter called Walter Sickert). The script weaves an entertaining yarn around these ideas, filled with secret masonic rituals and dastardly deeds, but it also goes a bit loopy in parts, throwing in bizarre developments (the most famous victim, Mary Kelly, escapes) and tenuous links to Queen Victoria and John Merrick. The central linking concept - that the victims all knew each other - is almost certainly false, but the locales and the details of the killings are painstakingly recreated. The movie nicely captures the tension of the time between the nobility and the deprived; the notion that the authorities did little to find the killer because who cares about a few less tarts in the world anyway ? Of all the Dickensian hardships foisted on the poor, Jack The Ripper represents the cruellest injustice. The cast are varied but good, with Depp (a Ripper fanatic by all accounts) impressive as the laudanum and absinthe-soaked Abberline, complete with a great "nuffing sahgint" accent, Graham memorable as the tenacious, fiery-haired Mary, and Coltrane solid support as the world-weary, Bard-quoting sergeant. I have mixed feelings about Holm's performance; he's one of my favourite actors (superb in Alien, Dreamchild, Brazil, many others) and is excellent in this, but he's seventy and five-feet-six, so I'm afraid he doesn't quite work as Jack The Ripper for me, despite some spooky pitch-black lenses. Compare him with David Warner in Time After Time for example, who is perfect casting as the original serial killer. For a good comparison piece to this, check out the 1988 TV-movie Jack The Ripper, with Michael Caine and Lewis Collins. Despite some flaws, this is a great costumed thriller; the title comes from the signature on one of Jack's infamous letters.