Release date: April 27, 2012
Directed by: James McTeigue
Screenplay by: Hannah Shakespeare & Ben Livingston
Cast: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Kevin R. McNally, Brendan Gleeson
Rating: R
Running Time: 111 minutes
It all seems cunningly familiar: damp, cobblestoned streets; gaslights barely cutting through the thick fog; horse-drawn carriages transporting unseen travelers in a populated 19th century city. A scream! A murder! Maybe two! The police, baffled, call in the one brilliant mind of the time, a moody man with an anarchic sensibility who knows crime better than anyone else.
Oh goody. It’s about time we had another installment of Sherlock Holmes. Beg pardon, Watson, what did you say? This is Poe, not Conan Doyle? This is Cusack, not Downey? Set in Baltimore rather than Britain, and 40 years earlier to boot? Heavens, this is some blunder.
But not as big a blunder as this feeble attempt to turn Poe into a fascinating fictional creation, running with a pack of cops that brings to mind the word “Keystone,” foundering within a plot so vague, acting so over-the-top, that the only shiver running down your spine is that of revulsion. To this non-poetic 2012 rendering of The Raven, we might all be tempted to, um, quoth, “Nevermore.”
[For the full review and Kimberly's rating, please click here]