The Raven - quick review (1 Viewer)

"The Raven", set in 1849, features Edgar Allan Poe, a writer and a poet finding it tough to make ends meet, though thoroughly a dastardly scroundrel with a fiery personality, and a credit history littered with unpaid bar tabs. John Cusack has some fun as Poe, and the film's plotline come to the fore as someone in Baltimore is staging murders similar to the ones that Poe wrote about in his stories, and the police find Poe to be of some use in anticipating the serial killer's next victim.
This film really didn't need to be rated R, though the script does toss in some salty language, and pushed for more gruesome displays of murders based on Poe's stories, but I guess the producers wanted to go as brutally and viscerally violent as Poe's stories lended themselves to be.
I give it 2.5 stars or a grade of C+-.