Hollywood treatment of the Ripper murders.

Rating: 6/10 (24 August 2003)

Johnny Depp plays an Inspector Abberline who is assigned to investigate the murders in Whitechapel attributed to Jack the Ripper. The film follows the theory explored in an earlier film, "Murder by Decree" (1979), that the Ripper murders were really the act of a mad palace surgeon who was killing the witnesses to a scandal involving Prince Edward.
I can't think of a more unlikely pair of actors to portray Victorian Londoners than Johnny Depp and Heather Graham. No matter how they tried to cover it up with elaborate costuming and bad accents, I kept seeing a surfer dude and a valley girl on the screen. Depp is a pretty decent actor but he was just wrong for this role.
The supporting cast is pretty good. Ian Holm is particularly good as Sir William Gull, the mad surgeon who goes about disemboweling the young women. Ian Richardson has a prominent role as Depp's boss, but the script doesn't give him much leeway to act.
The production values are slick, and the director went to great lengths to make the sets look authentic, but the film lacked any inner conviction. "Murder by Decree" made more of a social commentary about the perversity of the royal family and the social structure of Britain at the end of the 19th century. Here, sensationalism seems to be the dominant theme.
Maybe if the movie had been directed by somebody besides the Hughes Brothers it could have been more complex. They should stick to hip hop culture.