L'éventreur

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.

Not blazingly original, but still a well made film about the infamous Ripper murders. The cast is good, Bergin and Anwar are excellent and West is perfectly cast. Costuming, atmosphere and the like are up to big screen standards. Events and characters are modified a little for dramatic purposes, so true blue Ripper enthusiasts might find fault, but recommended for fans of Victorian period movies and general thriller/mysteries.

Treat this as a love story (albeit a little insipid) amid the gruesome goings-on in Ripperland, but not as a theory in Ripperology, and it turns out to be not a bad movie...not a good one...but I've seen worse.

The suspect is not a hot favourite with Ripperologists (or me), but he cannot be totally discounted. Although apparently the prince supposedly had cast iron alibis on each occasion of the murders, the Establishment (as was inferred by the movie) could quite easily have fabricated them and instigated a cover-up. (And royalty-bashing always seems to be a popular pastime. Security in the palace too, seems to have been as lax then as it is today.) Patrick Bergin although putting in a reasonable performance as Inspector Hansen was, to my mind, totally miscast. His Cockney accent seemed to be more a mixture of an Irish brogue and an Aussie drawl with just a soupçon of "'ow's yer father" thrown in. His side-kick was even worse. Still I suppose Michael Caine couldn't really be approached again, considering he'd already portrayed the real-life character of Inspector Aberline. Plus the fact that he'd probably have avoided this like the plague...(or "Swarm: the sequel").

Samuel West, reliable as ever, played the royal rip with gusto, and looked as if he actually enjoyed the role. I suppose "hamming it" would be more accurate. However, as far as the acting went, he was the pick of the bunch.

I don't honestly think this piece of hokum was meant to be a serious contender for the final solution. The story could just have easily been set in any Murder Mystery movie, but without the same impact. Nothing like a bit of Rippermania to set the pulses racing.

Everybody wants to be the one to discover the identity of the Whitechapel killer, but to do that ALL the facts have to be considered, and you won't find them here. Just enjoy the movie for what it is. Entertainment...of a sort.

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.

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.