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I came across this picture on Hallowe'en this year, when a DVD copy of it was being sold with "The Guardian". Having gotten familiar with Jack the Ripper earlier this year doing a play about him, I found the idea of the infamous serial killer in a movie with Micheal Caine irresistible. I wasn't disappointed.
The film shows the investigation of the famous killings in 1888, in the Whitechapel district in the East End of London. When a spate of apparently motiveless prostitute killings start bloodying the streets of Whitechapel, the local constabulary find themselves powerless. They call in Scotland Yard who send in their best detective Frederick Abberline (Caine) who pursues the case with a ruthless tenacity in the face of rising corpses and mounting public pressure...
It is actually quite an effective piece of film-making, even on a television budget. The streets of Victorian London are captured well on screen, Caine gives his customary brilliant performance and he is surrounded by a very strong supporting cast, including Lewis Collins as his assistant Godley, Ken Bones as crazed psychic Robert Lees and Ray McAnally as the Queen's doctor Sir William Gull. Armand Assante as stage actor Richard Mansfield and Jayne Seymour as the lover of both him and Abberline give great performances.
Without giving too much away, the film's theory as to the identity of the killer and the reason the case has been marked unsolved is actually a highly plausible one and the build-up to it is suspensefully enacted. The film does well to show Abberline's thought processes as he breaks down the logically how the killer operates.
Better than the more slickly polished Johnny Depp effort "From Hell" (which arrives at similar conclusions to this one), this is definitely a must-see for all the Jack the Ripper buffs out there. Case closed.
score 9/10
alainenglish 10 November 2009
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2155302/ |
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1-3-2021 12:07:07