"Excuse me, sir, but I believe you dropped your prostitute."

What a blessing for fiction writers that Jack the Ripper was never caught! If he had been, his story would probably be an interesting, if macabre, historical footnote rather than the inspiration for countless novels and movies. An unsolved mystery provides one with so many more opportunities for creative resolutions.

The latest is From Hell, an ambitious, gothic thriller based on a graphic novel (that's a fancy term for comic book) by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, directed by twin brothers Albert and Allen Hughes. In it, Johnny Depp plays Inspector Frederick Abberline, a police detective partial to mind-altering substances and prone to psychic visions. The visions prove very helpful to his investigation (the substances, not so much) into the brutal slayings of prostitutes on the mean streets of London's East End.

Let's start with the good news. Several of the performances are exceptional. Johnny Depp brings a sense of world-weary honor to his unconventional inspector. Robbie Coltrane provides the appropriate mix of cynicism and loyalty as Abberline's assistant. Ian Holm as the royal family's physician is the very picture of a Victorian era gentleman, outwardly compassionate to the lower classes even as he advocates lobotomizing their more troublesome members. Heather Graham as a spunky prostitute, however, feels a little too contemporary, particularly when her accent fades in and out.

The real Inspector Abberline	Johnny Depp, playing Inspector Abberline
Reason Number 2,317 why movies are better than real life.

And the film looks great. More than the story has been taken from the graphic novel; shots are composed with a comic book artist's attention to angle and detail. The gas-lit streets, the mysterious, black-caped figure disappearing into the fog, the squalid, smoky pubs all make for great atmosphere. The Hughes brothers have recreated 1888 London, and it feels right. Small moments depict how precarious life was for the poor, like the benches where they could rent space to sleep — sitting up, tied in to keep from falling over. When you contrast this with other scenes, set among the rich and educated members of society, you get a picture of a world corrupt and self-serving enough to create a monster like Jack.

The downside to all that atmosphere, however, is that it's easy for filmmakers to fall in love with it at the expense of everything else. The story plods along while we admire the fog-shrouded alley or the lovingly rendered opium den. The pacing is so slow at times that I felt as sedated as Abberline after a hit of laudanum. You'd think a film about the world's most infamous serial killer would have offered a bit more suspense.

"I'm going to say it's Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the lead pipe."

And while we're on the subject of serial killing, how 'bout that gore? Be forewarned: there are some gruesome images. Some would say gratuitous. But my view is this: Jack was a horrifically brutal guy. I've seen pictures of what he did to his victims and, believe me, it was worse than what we see on screen. If you're going to make a movie about a very real, very sadistic murderer, you need to give a reasonably realistic depiction of his crimes, while hopefully stopping short of making your audience vomit.

Overall, From Hell is a marginal success for me, if for no other reason than its fairly accurate depiction of the known facts of the case. Okay, the real Inspector Abberline was neither psychic nor opium-addicted, and, of course, the ending is pure conjecture. But if memory of the Ripper tour I took in London a few years ago serves, they get a lot more of it right than you might expect. So what if, like countless theorists before them, they mold these details into a solution that is almost certainly wrong? Donald Rumbelow, in his book The Complete Jack the Ripper writes, "One of the things that I have learned about playing the game of 'Hunt the Ripper' with correspondents from all over the world is that every fact is capable of being wrenched into the weirdest of interpretations." From Hell is just one more weird interpretation to add to the game.

Gorilla Pants rating: 2.5 out of 4 bananas