The Ripper

Ripper, The (1997)

** (out of 4)

Yet another version of the story of Jack the Ripper with Patrick Bergin playing Insp. Jim Henson, the man investigating the murders of various prostitutes. He strikes up a relationship with an on-again, off-again prostitute (Gabrielle Anwar) who just happened to witness one of the crimes. This film lets us know at the very start that Prince Albert Victor Edward committed the murders and the rest of the film is pretty much Bergin trying to catch who it is. We sit back as we watch the investigation and eventually the reasons why Prince Edward was never arrested for the murders. Many Ripper buffs say it was impossible for Edward to have been the real killer so they're probably not going to care too much for this film but this is a movie and not trying to be any sort of documentary. With that said, there are a few interesting things going on here but the 100-minute running time feels triple that and in the end there's just not enough stuff working here to make it worth sitting through. The biggest problem is the directing, which is hard to spot as it's clear Meyers doesn't have control of the story and she can't manage to get it on the screen in any sort of entertaining way. The film's pacing is incredibly bad because it feels like molasses as one scene just drags to the point where you feel the entire movie is about over with then you notice the section you've been watching only lasted a couple minutes. What does work are the ideas about the various forms of people and how much they hated one another. One subplot involves the rich feeling that Bergin is just wasting his time because there's nothing wrong with someone killing the "scum" on the streets. You even have a group feeling that it's a Jewish man doing the killings. You also have the poor resenting the police and refuses to help because they feel that the police don't care about them. These items are the most interesting thing working here but the direction keeps them from really being something special. Both Bergin and Anwar turn in good performances as does Samuel West as Prince Albert. There have probably been just as many Ripper movies as actual myths about the man and they're all of mixed quality. The mysterious around the case is what keeps the legend growing but this film here isn't one of the betters one out there and is for completest only.

Stayed up late to watch this on TV, being a bit of a J the R geek, always ready to read or see another take on the mystery. Oh my... Almost every known fact was either omitted, twisted or misused to serve a half-baked and ludicrous movie. It would have been more logical to make this a complete fiction and call the criminal Bert The Slasher, cos this has nothing to do with the London murders of 1888. I know it's 'just a film', and actually the true story wouldn't be very satisfactorily filmic, as there's no structure, no love story and the villain remains unknown, but a few arty cuts (no pun intended) and camera angles don't make this a good film. Bergin's accent wobbles, and West's pantomime psycho act makes the best of a potty script, but really, there are better things to be doing at 1 a.m. than watching this nonsense.

I loved this film. I am a lover of british movies and found this one to be unbelievable. I feel the theories about Jack The Ripper are put to rest in this film. I feel the actors were superb and the play it is based on is awesome as well.

This was terrible! I guess it's a very romantic notion that the Heir Presumptive could have been "Jack the Ripper," but since there's proof that he was out of the country when most of the murders were committed, why even try? Also, why throw in the love story? Just for the sake of it? It's too bad that these fine actors were wasted on such an awful concept. Samuel West, especially, is one actor I'd like to see in more movies stateside.

Yet another fictionalized film version of the Jack the Ripper story, The Ripper is a made for television film produced in Australia, using a cast mostly from that country and the UK. The focus in this version is Patrick Bergin as James Hansen, the chief inspector on the Jack the Ripper case, as well as his involvement with the upper class, including Prince Albert Victor Edward (Samuel West). There are also two romantic interests for Hansen--Florry Lewis (Gabrielle Anwar), a on-again/off-again prostitute who witnesses the killer leaving a crime scene, and Evelyn Bookman (Essie Davis), whom Hansen's aristocratic associates are trying to set him up with.

I wish I didn't have to repeat this in yet another review, but The Ripper is not a documentary, folks. Yes, it's obviously based on the Jack the Ripper case and various theories about it, but this is fiction, not fact. The film is no worse for not matching facts you know about the case, or for not matching what you consider to be plausible theories. The only thing you demonstrate when you point out "discrepancies" or "factual errors" in this film is that you can't grasp the distinction between fiction based on actual events and a documentary. If you're looking for a documentary on Jack the Ripper, there have been at least 10 made; check one of those out. You should only be watching The Ripper if you're interested in a fine filmic artwork set in late Victorian England that has a strong thriller thread under its period drama that is loosely based on Jack the Ripper.

One of the first things that stand out while watching The Ripper is its excellent visual style, which is especially impressive in light of the fact that this had to be a lower budget film. Under the skilled guidance of director Janet Myers, who only directed one other film prior to this one, the cinematography, lighting and production design--including the locations and sets as well as the costumes--are exemplary.

The cinematography and lighting dwell on a range of browns and grays, giving something like the sepia-toned nostalgic atmosphere of looking at old photographs, but at the same time nothing about it feels artificial; it's very naturalistic. The colors are not achieved through any kind of unusual film processing, as is often the case in recent genre films. Myers contrasts this often, especially in the beginning, with the rich red blood of Ripper victims. She also returns to a similar red throughout the film as a symbolic motif. For example, we see an appropriate character sitting on a rich red couch at one point (and with a woman on his right hand side, oddly distanced from him and looking uncomfortable).

The locations, sets and costumes authentically transport you to another time and place, even if they do not happen to be exactly correct per the actual world of late 19th Century London. And while in a lesser film the relative lack of humor might be a detriment--the dialogue by scriptwriter Robert Rodat is just as fervently period (in this case meaning more literary and a bit staid) as the production design. Here it helps immerse the viewer into The Ripper's world.

While horror is of course a focus, this version of the Jack the Ripper story leans much more heavily on dramatic complexities, which are fascinating. Hansen is from Florry's lower class, east-end world, but he's trying to adapt himself to another milieu. For one, that seems to be the only way of guaranteeing job stability and promotion. But we can see him inexorably drawn back to his roots, both in his growing interest in Florry and in his immersion in the Ripper case. His roots make him the only sensible candidate for solving the crime, as he has both an intimate knowledge of the world that has been most deeply affected by The Ripper and an outsider stance that enables him to more "objectively" look at the suspects. The film becomes a battle between two social worlds, with Hansen consistently torn between loyalties and interests. Given such a focus, The Ripper can only succeed if the performances are up to par. Fortunately, everyone is spot on.

This is not to say that there are not more visceral attributes, as well as an intriguing touch of police procedural characteristics--even including actual photographs of Jack the Ripper's victims, which are a nice production design touch, despite the complaints from the documentarians that the photos are factually "off" from the plot. And for that matter, there are a great many interesting facts about the Jack the Ripper case incorporated into the film, including a lot of minutiae surrounding the execution and investigation into the crimes. They may be transformed to fit this historically fictional plot better, and of course the theory about the killer championed in the film has been largely discredited by historians, but even a modicum of research will show a number of intriguing correlations between the thriller/horror aspects of the film and the real case.

This is a lamentably little-known film--I had never even heard of it before. I just happened upon it by accident one day while surfing the movie choices on DirecTV. Let's hope it eventually becomes available on DVD. It deserves a far weightier consideration as an artwork than it has received so far--this was nearly a 10 for me.