Anyone who mistakenly believes that serial killers and political cover-ups are maladies exclusive to the modern age will be abruptly and entertainingly disabused by From Hell (2001). Johnny Depp is at his quirkily deductive best as a psychic detective who's sniffing out the spoors of the notorious murderer and mutilator Jack the Ripper. The gruesome ghoul leads deadpan Depp through the teeming alleyways and murky swill holes of eighteenth-century London, a smoky, pitiless inferno populated by scurvy streetwalkers, palsied crones, crapulous thugs, and skeeving thieves. The many-headed worm of moral rot spits in Depp’s face at every twist of the plot, a foul portent of decay that has slithered all the way up to the highest offices of the land.