Murder mystery set in Victorian music-hall days

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This article was published 14/10/2017 (3006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A vicious, remorseless murderer is stalking the streets of Victorian London, leaving a crimson wake of bloody, mangled corpses.

The perpetrator is not Jack the Ripper. The pool of victims in The Limehouse Golem is different: a couple of prostitutes, yes, but also an elderly Jewish scholar and a whole family of innocents.

Kildare (Bill Nighy, who inherited the role after an ailing Alan Rickman had to leave the project) is the stolid Scotland Yard detective assigned to the case precisely because his anticipated failure won’t dim the budding careers of the Yard’s other leading lights.

Kildare’s investigation intersects with the arrest of music-hall star Elizabeth (Olivia Cooke), charged with the poisoning of her playwright husband John Cree (Sam Reid). Kildare had put the dead husband on his list of suspects because he happened to be signed into a library reading room where Kildare has discovered the maniac’s diary etched onto the pages of another book.

Other suspects who shared that space include future political firebrand Karl Marx (Henry Goodman) and novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins). But since the killer’s diary frames the atrocities as works of performance art, Kildare reasons the likeliest suspects are connected to the sensational realm of the music hall.

“London’s appetite for horror knows no bounds,” Kildare tells a constable as they head out to the theatre.

As Kildare sees it, Elizabeth, facing a likely guilty verdict and an appointment with the hangman, stands to become yet another victim of the slayer self-titled as the Golem. It’s a race against time.

His investigation takes him among the fascinating denizens of the music hall, including cross-dressing musical star Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), an indulgent producer known as “Uncle” (Eddie Marzan) and the spiteful acrobat Avaline (Maria Valverde).

If that list of suspects doesn’t clue you in, the film is very much a murder mystery, despite its ghastly-by-gaslight trappings.

It’s very much an adult mystery. Murders and their aftermaths may be a little more grisly than the average Agatha Christie adaptation, but so, too, is the spectrum of sexual peccadilloes.

And yet, the film — adapted by screenwriter Jane Goldman from the Peter Ackroyd novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem and handsomely directed by Juan Carlos Medina — ultimately impresses for its smarts, especially in its examination of a woman’s place in a hostile world that feels especially pertinent.

In that regard, Cooke does strong work in a role that runs the emotional gamut, befitting her character’s celebrated thespian status.

It doesn’t hurt her that her main acting partner, Nighy, is her perfect foil — emotionally shuttered yet possessed of such gravitational pull, he grounds the whole film.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing