Thankfully Not Interchangeable With a Theater Production and Distinctly Cinematic, Atmospheric and Voyeuristic

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2008)

At this point, I feel Tim Burton has redeemed himself after Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's certainly his best movie by far in almost a decade. It has a spectacle-centeredness that is better tamed in this Burton film than his last few. And that's because it does something very surprisingly rare in movies, which is deliver truly, deeply, savagely satisfying revenge. Seeing the film being my first time experiencing the story of Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber, the film's story is a very pleasant surprise. Most bloody revenge films are anemic when it comes to the pay-off, like Carrie or The Prestige for instance. Burton does not disappoint in his handling of this material. Sweeney Todd gruesomely goes for broke. It does not hold back on the bloodletting. The blood's theatrical color in giallo style has an excitingly insatiable effect.
Being an adaptation of a Broadway musical, it thankfully doesn't detach me with the expected light and prancy demeanor. Its tone is very gritty, it's historical London atmosphere a masterpiece of art direction, and it does with an adaptation what I think is truly effective, which is stand on its own without the source material by making it inextricably cinematic. Dante Ferretti's Victorian London is, like his L.A. in De Palma's The Black Dahlia, a city of the consciousness, space tinted by disfigured perceptions. The musical numbers are very tightly directed, a lot of them very voyeuristic in a way that a stage production could not be.
Johnny Depp's performance is a very convincing one, further severing the tendency for Burton's films to have a detachment that makes them less compelling and more forgettable. He oozes dominance, a more imposing Depp than what we normally see him do. Alan Rickman matches his emboldening presence with another intriguingly infuriating villain.