From the dark, gothic imagination of iconic director Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a bloody tale of music, murder, melodrama and meat pies. Laced with black humour and seasoned with beautiful musical ballads, Tim Burton serves up a sugarplum tale of serial-killing barber Sweeney Todd and his desperate desire for revenge.
Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) a once timid law-abiding hairdresser who was unjustly imprisoned on the other side of the world for fifteen years has returned to London to seek vengeance. Armed with razors and the adopted guise of Sweeney Todd, Barker sets up business in his old barber shop above the pie-making premises of Mrs. Nellie Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). Enlisting the help of the pie purveyor, Barker sets about targeting Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) who, along with his henchman Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall), shipped him off to Australia on a trumped-up charge in order to poach his wife Lucy (Laura Michelle Spall) and baby daughter.
The grotty setting of Victorian London presents the perfect location for Tim Burton's gothic vision and with much-loved muse Johnny Depp pitched alongside the hauntingly talented Helena Bonham Carter; Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is an irresistible set up. Burton's direction of this, his darkest and certainly bloodiest feature to date, is note perfect and, with the accompaniment of the disturbing and dissonant musical ballads of Steven Sondheim, has presented an eye-popping feast of horror, black comedy, and genuine heartache. Embodying elements of murder, abuse, and madness, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a macabre and moving musical movie that, much like one of Mrs. Lovett's meat pies, is fulfilling, drenched in blood, and full of surprises.
