Product Details

• Actors: Ray Winstone, David Warner, Essie Davis, Gabriel Spahiu, Anthony O'Donnell
• Directors: Dave Moore
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: ACORN MEDIA
• DVD Release Date: April 10, 2007
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000MR9CXW
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,690 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

SWEENEY TODD - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting But Somewhat Slow Variation On The Famous London Story, December 26, 2007

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut (DVD)

Although some have tried to argue that he was an actual person, it seems likely that the story of a throat-cutting barber named Sweeney Todd arose first as a bit of urban myth that was developed into an 1846 story titled THE STRING OF PEARLS by writer Thomas Prest. A year later the story was adapted to the stage as SWEENEY TODD, THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET. It proved a popular ticket, and in age that knew little of copyright law, versions of the play were soon springing up all over the place, each one tweaking the story a little bit in the process. Consequently, it is almost impossible to say that any one particular version is "more authentic" than any other.

In this particular version, filmed for BBC in 2006, Todd (Ray Winstone)is a barber who spent twenty years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Released, he finds himself shaving a prison guard and on sudden impulse slits the man's throat. One thing leads to another, as you might say, and he soon makes the acquaintance of bake-shop worker Mrs. Lovett (Essie Davis); his fondness for her not only leads him to set her up in her own business, but to supply the occasional cut of meat as well. The twist to this particular version of the story is in the relationship between Todd and Lovett, the latter of whom is more sinned against than sinning.

The script is quite clever, essentially winding most of Todd's motives (including his interest in Mrs. Lovett) around his own mistreatment while an inmate of the notorious Newgate prison, and both Winstone and Davis are extremely impressive in their performances. But for all the blood, and there is aplenty, and for all the sex, and there is some, the film looks exactly like what it is: a made-for-television movie. It is also rather slow and quite often a bit too "stiff upper lip" for its own good.

The DVD release offers a good transfer but, excepting cast credits, nothing in the way of bonus material. Those interested in the various directions the story has taken will find it intriguing, but most others will likely be only mildly interested.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Winstone shines, as usual., June 26, 2009

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut (DVD)

Sweeney Todd (Dave Moore, 2006)

Sometime in the past decade or so, Ray Winstone has quietly gone from being a stock heavy (for example, in 1997's brilliant heist flick Face) to being one of Britain's best, and most versatile, actors. Nowhere has he shown this more than in Dave Moore's striking adaptation of Sweeney Todd, with Winstone playing the title character. A number of film versions of this story that I've seen have been simplified, glossing over some of the darker elements of the story (which is an odd thing to say about a story whose central figure is a serial killer), but Moore (Wallis and Edward) revels in the stuff that's outside the realm of the accepted, and it shows.

In case you've been living in a cave the past few hundred years, Sweeney Todd is a delicate, uplifting love story involving the title character (Winstone), a London barber (remember that back in the day, barbers also performed surgery) and the woman down the street, Mrs. Lovett (Girl with a Pearl Earring's Essie Davis), a former prostitute who now runs a pie shop. The two form a symbiotic relationship; Lovett refers folks to Todd. Todd kills them, then returns the bodies to Lovett, who makes them into pies. Free meat! Bigger profits, and it's probably better than you'd get from your local Megacorp. Needless to say, the police are concerned about the large number of disappearances, and Mrs. Lovett's husband, a nasty brute of a man, is starting to get suspicious. Needless to say, the bodies keep piling up. Didn't I say it was uplifting?

The Sweeney Todd bio has been done about a thousand times on stage and screen, with varying degrees of effectiveness. This one is done very well indeed, especially for a TV movie. Moore refuses to pull any punches, keeping within the bounds of television appropriateness by implying, rather than showing, many if the nastier bits. Still, if you record this thinking you're getting the Tim Burton version, be aware that this one, while not explicit, is still not for the smaller kiddies. For everyone else, though, it's an effective, wonderfully-acted treatment of the subject, and it's well worth watching. *** ½

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Why? Because I Could...And Then I Couldn't Not...", February 10, 2010

By 

darklordzden "darklordzden" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweeney Todd - The Director's Cut (DVD)

London, The Eighteenth Century: Sweeney Todd (Ray Winstone) ekes out an existence as a surgeon barber on the streets of an overcrowded British Metropolis which has been transformed into a purgatory of poverty, deprivation, despair and feculence by the ceaseless, implacable forces of the industrial revolution. Todd himself is a lonely, reclusive man who is haunted by the indignities suffered during a twenty year tenure inside the city's notorious Newgate prison (after being wrongly convicted of a crime for which his ne'er-do-well father was actually responsible). One foggy evening, an abrasive jailer from the prison enters Todd's shop and, during the course of his shave, engages the fragile barber in a boastful conversation concerning the conditions inside the prison. In one climatic moment, twenty years of repressed rage explodes to the homicidal fore and Todd's straight-razor is put to devastating use. The jailer is Todd's first kill, but before his reign of terror is over, he will be very far from the last...

If you only watch one screen adaptation of the legend of "Sweeney Todd", eschew the rest - including the big budget musical directed by Tim Burton - and make it this television adaptation from 2006.

Why?

Because, pound for pound, it is the most profoundly disturbing, brilliantly acted and subtly rendered portrait of this mythical murderer to yet make it to the screen.

Ray Winstone is nothing short of a revelation as the morose, emotionally scarred child-man whose compulsive need to kill is driven as much by his own trauma and sense of existential emptiness as his sense of nihilism. And yet even in the depths of his homicidal impulses, Winstone manages to imbue the character with a profound sense of remorse, a touching innocence and even a twisted sense of morality. It's a magnificently nuanced performance which is underplayed to perfection by an actor generally not allowed to express such subtlety onscreen in his usual "tough guy" roles. Winstone is ably supported by a cast that includes the luminescent Essie Davis, veteran actor David Warner and "Mad-Max-In-Waiting" Tom Hardy who all perfectly portray the various innocents inadvertently drawn into (and transformed by) Todd's heinously magnetic sphere of influence.

The filth and poverty of Eighteenth century London is expertly rendered onscreen with Bucharest convincingly standing in for the city. One is almost overwhelmed by the stale scent of perfumed wigs, failure and grime which seems to permeate the film. The violence of Todd's murders are also convincingly, but not gratuitously, evoked - as are the more barbarous medical practices of the time (a scene in which a character has a Kidney Stone removed - sans anaesthetic - managed to make me wince despite the lack of any onscreen gore).

But what sets this adaptation apart from the rest is the realism with which the director treats his subject matter. Simply put, the only other film which has rendered such a hypnotically convincing and multifaceted vision of psychopathology is John MacNaughton's profoundly brilliant and deeply disturbing film Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer (20th Anniversary). Indeed, this vision of Sweeney Todd shares much in common with that film in terms of it's themes and it's examination of the motivations and existential ennui of its occasionally sympathetic, deranged protagonist: like Michael Rooker's "Henry", we can see how this character has been molded, even if we cannot stomach his murderous proclivities or really believe (just as he cannot believe) that there can ultimately be any kind of redemption for him.

There is still much conjecture over whether the character of Sweeney Todd, who was originally rendered in the 'Penny Dreadful', "The String Of Pearls", had his basis in the conduct of an actual man. Thanks to the Sondheim musical, the Burton film and over a century of mythology, the bombastic "Demon Barber Of Fleet Street" is the prevalent image of the strange character. But as Todd observes in the course of this film, "if there is hell, it is the one that we make for ourselves" and accordingly it would seem to follow that if there are demons, they are most certainly the ones with which we torture (and make of) ourselves.

Hauntingly good stuff. I recommend this adaptation over all of the others unreservedly.