Tim Burton wastes no time in establishing this latest version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street right smack into the world he has been steadily creating since Edward Scissorhands. In a way, it is as if all his previous works have been a build-up towards his final destination, that of a good old fashioned musical. Tim Burton was born to direct this movie.

While Burton can be rightly criticized for being a one-note director (his detours out of the Gothic world have an uneven track record at best), this movie is an example of the kind of magic that can happen when a talented director is perfectly matched with material and actors suited to his talents' strengths. Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the musical the film is based on, and Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, the main actors, are in such perfect sync with Burton’s vision that it is as if they had all collaborated on the work from its very creation.

The theme of Sweeney Todd, that of vengeance for a life wronged, is an old one. Sweeney, once a mild-mannered barber named Benjamin Barker, comes back from a wrongfully served prison sentence a broken and demented man. He is intent on getting his vengeance from the corrupt Judge Turpin (played with sleazy charm by the always sleazy Alan Rickman), the man responsible for his downfall. Judge Turpin did it all just to get at Barker’s lovely fair-haired wife. When Barker returns to London he learns from the local meat pie vendor Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham-Carter) that after getting raped by the Judge, his wife committed suicide and Turpin took custody of Barker’s infant daughter, whom he now keeps locked away as his ward until she is old enough to take as his wife. Barker, a man destroyed, becomes Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. He slashes customers at will, refining his murderous skill as he waits for Turpin to need the kind of close shave only he can give. Mrs. Lovett, meanwhile, makes meat pies out of his victims downstairs at her shop.

To the jaded viewers of today (myself included), such a story line would inevitably conclude with Sweeney either falling for the rascally charms of Mrs. Lovett and skipping off into the sunset with their fortune earned from human meat pies, or with Sweeney rescuing his beautiful blond daughter and learning that revenge is not the answer. It is to the credit of Sweeney Todd that neither of those two scenarios happen. Sweeney Todd sticks to the basic structure of the traditional tragic ending, albeit one dripping with black humor.

Burton gives this rather old fashioned musical a look so perfectly suited to its storyline it’s almost as if he’s made this movie before (and indeed, the look of the characters and the set could be ripped from any number of his previous Gothic works). It is a pity then that its familiar feel masks the amazing ingenuity he put into it. At first glance, Sweeney Todd looks as if it is filmed in black and white. It is doubly shocking, in this setting, to then see gushes of bright red blood spewing from his victim’s necks. It also makes Mrs. Lovett’s dreams of a happy future with Sweeney, filmed in happy, bright pastels, look ridiculous and absurd. Not since Schindler’s List has a movie made such good use of color.