><( ;>

Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street couldn't have fallen into better hands. Tim Burton is this generation's Hitchcock, possibly more, who tickles fear without hesitation, purging thoughts like cannibalism and incest through stylistic rituals that are half-funny and half-insane, all leaving a seething bite to our tingling bones.

Johnny Depp (his sixth collaboration with Burton) Helena Bonham Carter brings Sondheim’s score and libretto to life. It was brilliant, getting actors who can carry a tune rather than getting people who sing like Jennifer Hudson. There was stylistic restraint in actors like Depp and Carter who know their best ace in interpreting a musical character is by piercing through the role instead of singing their hearts out. The result is a macabre musical that is reminiscent of Brechtian and Jacobean drama, rather than just a musical.

Sweeney Todd (Depp) is a barber who was put in prison on false charges by the corrupt Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who lusts after his wife. Fifteen years in prison have done much to change Sweeney (originally Benjamin Barker), and have left him a hardened man as he returns to London. The news of his wife poisoning herself from former landlady Mrs. Lovett (Carter), and Turpin adopting his now-grown daughter Johanna (Jayne Wisener) do nothing but increase his bloodlust for revenge. It’s the news of Turpin’s intention to marry Johanna that sends Todd over the edge, slitting the throats of his customers, and sending the corpses down to Mrs. Lovett’s oven so that she can make meatpies of the remains.

Mrs. Lovett's love for Sweeney Todd leads to the overlapping twists in the story, that sets-up a heart-wrenching climax. Forget horror and suspense movies, the bloodletting here from a triangle of obsessions besetting all the characters is much, much better. Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd makes this movie impressive. Depp is as astonishing a comic sociopath here while being empathically tragic.

It's unsettling, this film. But it's worth it.