"When legend becomes fact, print the legend" - The most famous quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
"Fame and success are as addictive as heroin" - Sylvester Stallone.
2 apt quotes for this film. It will make sense when the closing credits roll.
Victorian era London. 1880. A police inspector investigating a series of perplexing and horrific murders finds himself questioning a woman tangentially involved in the case who is facing a possible death sentence in another separate case. He delves into her life and is troubled by what he finds. Meanwhile he finds himself looking into a diverse group of suspects in the murder case. Can he solve both mysteries? Maybe. Who knows? Actually, me, I know. And I don't do spoilers because I'm sound like that.
I went into this film totally cold and enjoyed it but a couple of big issues threaten to derail it as well.
It's a well paced and well written (apart from one vital aspect, more on this later) movie. We get a lot of info thrown and us and plenty of twists and turns that will make you sure of one thing and then unsure of it later. Loads of suspects as well to make it a nice guessing game. It's a grim and realistically staged recreation of Victorian era London. From the sleazy darkness that made the place so dangerous for women and children to the much needed joy that music halls brought into peoples lives. It's recreation of the entertainment of the day is great fun actually and gives us a bit of light in the darkness. It's also quite a gritty and bloody film but doesn't revel in it. It's restrained in places where I expected full on goo but still throws in a few well placed shockers to make the more squeamish out there squirm in their seats. There's also a couple of scenes that will upset everyone so be warned. As well as this it's a look at the downtrodden role of women in Victorian society and how they were seen as a commodity no matter how hard they tried to rise up. And to top it off it's a look at the price of fame and what people are willing to do to achieve it. This gives the film a nice bit of depth that is sorely missing elsewhere.
There's a very decent cast on display too. An unusually serious Bill Nighy leads the film as Inspector John Kildare. Daniel Mays (one of my fave British actors at the moment) is good as a Bobby following the inspectors lead. Douglas Booth, ropey accent aside does good work as as a popular performer in the music halls. Eddie Marsan shows his darker side as a man in charge of a music hall and rocks an amazing tache but the film belongs to Olivia Cooke as a woman who has grown up hard and then finds herself facing a noose for a crime she says she didn't commit. She's great in this, lights up the screen when she appears and I fully expect her to become a big star when her next film 'Ready Player One' is released.
It's structure left a lot to be desired though. A lot is shown through flashbacks which are at first quite confusingly staged. After a while you'll figure then out but the film might lose some viewers interests before that. It's a stylistic thing that I found annoying and unnecessary. Not the flashbacks now, just how some of them are shown. Also Bill Nighy's Inspector Kildare has zero depth. None. He's basically there to explain the plot to us. That's not a good way to treat the main character. We get some early whispers of inner turmoil and strife but nothing is explored past that. Why bother paying lip service to an interesting aspect of a lead characters life if you aren't going to do anything with it? Nighy is a cracking actor and felt wasted here.
It looks good. It's nicely twisty and twisted. If you don't mind a nothing lead character this is a pretty solid 2 hrs in the cinema
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