After we’re shown an opening CGI view of London’s harbor circa 1800, the face of Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower) fills the right third of the screen. "There’s no place like London," he sings in rapturous and youthful tones. Then another face overlaps his, singing the same words, this time sly inflected to mean something entirely different. Hope’s London is full of beauty and adventure; the second man sees only dark alleyways, workhouses, and man’s inhumanity to man. He is Benjamin Barker, newly escaped from an Australian prison. He has renamed himself Sweeney Todd, and is played as if lived by Johnny Depp.

When we first see Todd, we see only that face. Soon we are shown the disheveled hair with the Bride of Frankenstein white streak, and it is readily apparent that Barker/Todd is a very disturbed man on the brink of madness. Flashbacks reveal that, years before, he was a successful barber with a beautiful wife and child who were desired by the conniving Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman), who trumped up a charge against Barker and had him sent to a penal colony. Barker’s wife was reported a suicide; the child, Johanna, was made the judge’s ward.

Todd returns to the building he used to live in to find Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter) running a food shop where, she confesses, she sells "the worst pies in London." She has kept Barker’s case of silver razors, awaiting his return. Plotting revenge on Judge Turpin, Todd sets up his business above Lovett’s shop. When Todd meets someone from his past who recognizes and could identify him, Todd kills him. Mrs. Lovett remarks that it would be a shame to let the body go to waste when it’s so hard to find meat for pies. Todd, by now almost completely unhinged, sets up a special barber’s chair and begins slitting the throats of most of his clients. He then pulls a lever, and the body slides through a hole in the floor to end up in Mrs. Lovett’s butcher shop. The exhilaration of killing sends Todd into total madness, and events spiral down to their dramatic and unhappy end.

It hardly seems the stuff of a hit musical. Indeed, when composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s show debuted on Broadway in 1979, it was based on the darkest subject -- a true story, by the way -- that had ever sparked a musical play, and contained so much music that it was nearly an opera. Angela Lansbury was the first Mrs. Lovett, Len Cariou the ill-fated Todd. In later touring productions featuring Lansbury, Cariou was replaced by George Hearne, who virtually made the role his own.

That Johnny Depp can make one forget those great performances is a wonder. He does his own singing, and it’s more than respectable -- nuanced, on the mark, a perfect marriage of music and drama. When on screen, he seems to fill it. When the camera pulls back in a scene near the middle of the film, one is almost shocked to see that he is really a very small man. Otherwise, Depp seems ten feet tall, and plays Todd’s descent into mental hell with a zest that almost indicates that he has been there. This is playing inside a character at its very best. He not only deserves nomination for many awards, he deserves to win a few.

But Todd is not the only character here. Mrs. Lovett is pivotal -- it is she who manipulates the crazed barber into her own scenario. Bonham-Carter strives hard, and succeeds in quieter moments, such as "By the Sea," in which she describes her vision of happiness. But when she needs to go over the top along with her partner, she’s weak. Her singing is not so great, and it’s often difficult to understand the words -- a cardinal crime in a Sondheim musical, in which each word is so carefully placed.

The rest of the cast is quite good, especially Edward Sanders as Toby, the boy who becomes Mrs. Lovett’s employee. His performance of "Not While I’m Around" is the single best non-Depp moment in the movie. Bower’s singing of "Johanna" is not far behind. Sacha Baron Cohen’s appearance as the barber Adolfo Pirelli seems like a star turn, and Rickman’s Judge Turpin seems like evil merely re-enacted in comparison to Depp’s re-creation of it.

Director Tim Burton has provided a production design that is unrelentingly grim -- although the film is ostensibly shot in color, 95% of it is closer to black-and-white or sepia-and-white. Think of the color scheme Burton came up with for Corpse Bride and you’ll have the idea. The sets are claustrophobic, and the costumes, even those of the rich, are tattered and disheveled. Burton’s London is a place that no person of sound mind would consider home. The songs have been much trimmed, wisely edited to cut by a third the three-hour Broadway running time. Much of Sondheim’s wry humor is lost, partly through exaggeration, partly through Bonham-Carter’s less-than-articulate singing.

The bloodletting has gotten a lot of attention from the press; it’s graphic, and there’s a lot of it. I didn’t count the number of throats slit, but it seemed like over a dozen, each one with spurting arterial blood accompanied by the sounds of severed flesh and crunching bone. Even more disturbing were the scenes of Mrs. Lovett’s basement shop, filled with body parts and a grotesque meat grinder. These sights might be horrible enough to make some want to become instant vegetarians.

I don’t mean to diminish Burton’s achievement. He has created a work of genius that, along with Depp’s performance, perfectly chronicles a man’s descent into madness. But he focuses on some very unsavory sights, and anyone considering watching Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street should be aware of the fact. I suppose it’s no worse than Saw III, though a film that’s 90% singing is unlikely to appeal to the Saw franchise’s audience. On Broadway, an intermission gave brief respite from what was being shown onstage. Burton takes the audience hostage for almost two hours without a break. The experience is not for the faint of heart or queasy of stomach, but fans of Sondheim and/or Depp will not be deterred and will be greatly rewarded.

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