Entertaining enough...

Rating: 6/10 (8 May 2009)

The 'Jack the Ripper' murders endure for no other reason than that the man himself was never identified. There have been equally as brutal murders the world over, but these are different because not having anyone to finger, we can finger anyone. And that is exactly what writers, playwrights and movie-makers have done ever since. Actually, 'Jack the Ripper' was as much an invention of the then nascent tabloid Press as anything else. The name is supposedly derived from a letter the murderer is said to have sent to the Press, but the received wisdom is that it was, in fact, dreamed up by some sub-editor with one eye on a good headline to a cracking story. (One of the first and most useful pieces of advice I and more or less every young reporter is given when starting out on our careers of discovering and unearthing the truth wherever it might lurk is: 'Don't let a couple of facts stand in the way of a good story.' I am pleased to report that I haven't, ever.) There is even very credible doubt that there even was a Jack the Ripper. Around the time his alleged victims were butchered, another six or seven other working girls in the neighbourhood were also murdered. The Ripper murders were attributed to the one killer merely because of the particularly gruesome manner five of the victims were mutilated and disembowelled. So these deaths have always been a fertile ground for artists of most kind (and one artist, the celebrated Walter Sickert, has also been named as the 'definitive Jack the Ripper). Here 'the Hughes Brothers' of whom I had never heard until tonight — are they, too, perhaps the invention of some overwrought sub-editor's imagination? — rework the story and interweave the gruesome end of the five prostitutes with a conspiracy which, as we subs are apt to proclaim in our sub-heads, 'goes right to the very top'. As stories and conspiracies go, it isn't half bad. Unfortunately, a previous Ripper film got in there first more than 20 years earlier, but From Hell is none the worse for that. The cast plays it rather well, especially Johnny Depp, whose lower-class London accent has been criticised by some, but it didn't offend me, and if that is the worst criticism that could be aimed at From Hell, the fabled 'Hughes Brothers' have little to worry about. Depp, as usual (well, in these viewers eyes, at least) again seems to ham it up, but very subtly, that is, not so you'd notice. In fact, the man can play this kind of part with his eyes closed, and I, for one, would like to see him in a far more challenging role where real acting is demanded rather than simply not forgetting his lines and not bumping into the furniture. I like to think we wouldn't be disappointed. I wasn't particularly convinced by Heather Graham who must be one of the cleanest whores working the streets in Whitechapel. Apart from these two Yanks, each more or less successfully adopting English accents — which rather begs the question: why cast Yanks? — the rest of the cast are all old familiar faces, lead from the front by the ever dependable Ian Holm and Ian Richardson, who can also both turn in the required performance with their eyes shut and still be home in good time for supper. Prague doubled up as East London, and a rather clean and sanitised East London it was, too. But I mustn't grumble: From Hell provides an entertaining two hours of rather good hokum, doesn't descend to the rather cheap depths of a slasher movie and will get you and your friends discussing the identity of the Ripper and the conspiracy behind it for, oh, at least six minutes before you find something better to do. Oh, and the usual caveat: elsewhere in these member's reviews you will find the standard hyperbole of From Hell being the best film ever made ever. Why do they bother?