Review of The Raven (2012) by Early B — 09 Oct 2012

The final days of author and original emo, Edgar Allan Poe, remain one of great mysteries of the literary world. Roaming Baltimore, delirious, in someone else's clothes and asking after 'Reynolds', Poe died soon afterwards giving no indication of what had happened to him. James McTiegue's The Raven tries to tie all the loose ends together with a wholly fictional account that sees Poe (John Cusack) trying to solve a series of murders based on his macabre tales.

The Raven looks sumptuous; all cracked red leather seats and cigarello smoke. And that's the good points out of the way.

Thematically, the film awkwardly staggers along the line between the Hughes Brothers pi-faced From Hell and Guy Ritchie's slap-around Sherlock Holmes series. When Cusack isn't beating his chest and shaking his fist at the heavens, he's sharing quips with surly Inspector Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) in what looks like an attempt at camaraderie. This unevenness of tone is just the tip of an iceberg that encapsulates an overlong running time, a worthless antagonist and an ending that is unsatisfactory to say the least.