Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street Movie Review (2007)

Directed by Tim Burton, written by John Logan, 117 minutes, rated R.

The new Tim Burton movie, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," is bloody, yes--and it's also bloody excellent.

Screenwriter John Logan based the film on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's long-running musical, and what he and Burton have created is one of the year's best movies, a dark, violent musical that thrums with menace, mischief and malice.

This highly stylized, great-looking film finds cinematographer Dariusz Volski draining it of so much color, the characters and sets take on the hues of a corpse.

Throughout, the screen almost looks refrigerated--you'd swear that if you touched it, you'd be bitten by cold. Increasingly, things heat up with flashes of red, but that's only when someone's throat is slit and gruesome, gushing ribbons of crimson spray forth to warm up the screen.

Decked out in a blowout fright wig that challenges anything he wore in Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" is Johnny Depp in the title role.

Here, taking another risk in a career built on taking risks, Depp gives a meaty performance (sorry) as Todd, the gifted, 19th-century barber who knows his way around a close shave and who begins the movie armed with revenge.

Early on, we're offered a glimpse into Todd's past, when he was named Benjamin Barker and was a happy family man with a beautiful wife and baby daughter. Each was undone by the evil Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, wonderful as usual), a greasy snob who wanted Barker's wife for himself and who set about getting her by devising a plan that sent Barker to prison.

Fifteen years later, Barker has escaped, assumed the name Sweeney Todd and is stealing back into London, where he meets the not-so-lovely Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), a glowering frump of a woman famous for making some rather shoddy meat pies. She knows it, too, not that she cares. She also knows who Todd really is, which complicates their relationship nicely as she reintroduces Sweeney to his gleaming set of razor blades, all hidden in his old barber shop above her pie shop, and makes a pact with him that is mutually beneficial.

Mrs. Lovett will keep her mouth shut and allow Todd his revenge on the hateful Turpin (and eventually all of London when his first attempt at killing Turpin goes wrong), so long as he provides her with a steady supply of meat for her increasingly popular pies. Since Todd has gone mad, let the slicing and dicing begin.

Not to mention the singing, which is very good, as is the energy that comes from the film's darkly funny musical numbers. Supporting turns from Timothy Spall as the grotesque Beadle Bamford, Sacha Baron Cohen as the mincing Italian barber Pirelli, and Jayne Wisener as Todd's daughter Johanna, are excellent. Same goes for Jamie Campbell Bower as Anthony, the young sailor working to save Johanna from her unfortunate fate with Turpin.

But the movie's real magic is sparked by Depp and Carter, who seem to share the same lost, twisted soul. They are so good together, so bruised, each seamlessly blending into the moldy damp of Burton's old world, that in this movie, they make a compelling argument for ditching the standard holiday fare of fruit cakes in favor of enjoying Mrs. Lovett's meat pies, regardless of all the sins ground within.

Grade: A

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