Christopher Lee, Richardson and a host of British characters
actors, familiar from stints as inn-keepers in Hammer flicks, join Depp
and Ricci in this
version of a classic American folk-tale. I possess no familiarity at all
with the original, so can't comment on how much Burton has skewed it
towards his own, ethereally warped, sensibilities, but going on past
performance, it's probably changed a bit from Irving's original. While
Burton is clearly out to capture the aura of Hammer, Depp comes over more
like Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer than Professor Van Helsing, his
Ichabod Crane is a constable, fond of the new forensic science.
Indeed, the first half is more police procedural, with elements of The
Wicker Man in the corruption to be found lying beneath an innocuous
surface. This area isn't really the director's strength, it's only when the
headless horseman (played, with a head, in a nice cameo which I'll leave as
a surprise) enters T2 mode that it
clicks into gear, coming on like a river in spate. This is great: shame
that up until then, everyone forgot it was a horror story, rather than an
episode of Murder She Wrote.
C+