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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

The Raven

THE RAVEN (James McTeigue). 111 minutes. Opens Friday (April 27). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN


The Raven is a moderately enjoyable old-school murder mystery that casts famed writer Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) as a sleuth after somebody uses his stories as a pattern for grisly killings in 1849 Baltimore.

The movie never catches the delirious tone of Poe’s stories, but there are some sequences of atmospheric, suspenseful fun, notably the horseman at the party and the mystery of the missing stagehand.

Cusack does a fine job suggesting a keen intellect hard at work when he’s detecting with the tight-lipped cop on the case (Luke Evans). He’s amusing as Poe reciting The Raven to a salon full of enthralled women or romancing the love interest (Alice Eve).

But Cusack is awkward as the alcoholic ranter and melancholic the script insists upon, and, whatever he’s doing, he moves and sounds like a 21st-century man. The little moustache and goatee that look like they were ripped off Nicolas Cage don’t help.

Some of the details from Poe’s life and work that fill out the movie are witty and add to the story, but others kill the momentum. And some are glaring anachronisms, like the headline that blares “Serial Killer.”

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