Sleepy Hollow

Darth Maul uses a steel saber instead of light.

Features: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Christopher Walken
Director: Tim Burton
written: November '99
Given the number of movies which have hacks for directors*, it's great to see a auteur behind the camera enveloping us with his vision. Tim Burton is such a director. The man is a genius. His gift for telling stories which are eerie is downright, well, spooky. He proved himself on Beetlejuice, he gave Batman the proper Dark Knight look (even if the story presented Bats as an incompetent, murdering, gun-toting psychotic), Edward Scissorhands combined eerieness with heart-warming Christmas cheer with aplomb and Ed Wood made Hollywood's worst director a sympathetic figure. Then Mars Attacks! showed that sometimes a premise is better than its execution. Can't win 'em all.

Sleepy Hollow changes the classic story just a tad. Ichabod Crane is no longer a native of Sleepy Hollow. Instead he is a detective on the NYC police force in 1799. He wants to use "scientific methods" to solve crimes, so shades of Bruce Wayne/Batman. He's sent to Sleepy Hollow for daring to stir things up.

Burton pulls a Stanley Kubrick and uses cast members from previous Burton movies in Sleepy Hollow. Johnny Depp is Crane. Jeffrey Jones is a town elder. Martin Landau has a cameo. Burton's squeeze, Lisa Marie, plays Ichabod's mother for the flashbacks.

Depp plays Crane as a priss who wants to solve the crimes, but at times does not have the vaguest idea of how to do just that. Christina Ricci is the love interest who at times is way more on the ball than Depp.

One thing you have to admit with Burton movies, the man knows how to establish mood. After all, a movie is not a photographed play, it's an entity--lighting, editing, sound, and camera angles onto itself. Here Sleepy Hollow is overcast and awash with fog and shades of blue. To say Burton had his cinematographer use a limited palette range is like saying Model Ts came in any color, as long as it was black.

While Burton movies are very cool from a look standpoint, they're not the most plot-driven movies in the theatres. Sleepy Hollow is better in this regard, but not much. The trouble with the flick is a reliance on some pretty hoary cliches to move the story along. Course I can't say without me being one of those I'll-spoil-the-movie-just-to-make-an-easy-critique-for-myself jerks, but you'll definitely know it when they happen. Then the capper is the villian revealing all to a hapless victim in a Snidely Whiplash manner. You can damn near see the villian twirling a waxed moustache and gloating while tieing the victim to railroad tracks. If you didn't figure it out thanks to non-existent clues which are reiterated during this sequence, don't feel bad. I didn't either.

Since the Headless Horseman is way PO'ed, he uses his saber like a Ginzu knife separating people's heads from their bodies left and right. So the flick is quite bloody. Don't say I didn't warn you. Plus the backstory brings new meaning to Theater of Blood.

You like Burton movies, then see. You want an out-of-the-ordinary movie, then go. You want Disney sweetness and light, then stay home.

Oh, the ref to Darth Maul in the blurb at the top? Ray Park, the stuntman who played Darth in the abominable The Phantom Menace , is the Headless Horseman stuntman.

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* If you're thinking "directors" with the initials JS or RH, you're on the right track.