By Steven Snyder

“Graphic Bloody Violence” — that’s the criteria the MPAA used when giving Tim Burton’s gruesome, gratuitous take on the Stephen Sondheim serial killer musical an “R” rating. And ironically, Burton’s eagerness to go darker and deeper with “Sweeney Tood” is the decision that makes the big-screen version somehow both less enjoyable, yet more emotionally rewarding.

Remaining (for the most part) faithful to the staged work, what Burton has unearthed, with the aid of a breathtaking production design and an impressive array of vocal talent (actors Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and even “Borat’s” Sacha Baron Cohen sang their own lines), is the rotten heart at the core of this “demon barber.” This incarnation of “Sweeney Todd” is not so much morbidly entertaining as genuinely unsettling — a cold-blooded depiction of a shattered, hopelessly lost man. When Depp, playing Sweeney, lifts up his arm, razor in hand, and proclaims “at last, my arm is complete again” there’s something profoundly bleak about the spectacle, less a theatrical flourish than proof that the man’s gone well beyond the point of no return.

The story, for those who still do not know, is about a man who once was happy (visualized by Burton in a glossy, gleaming flashback), in love with a wife and child who are both snatched from him forever in the blink of an eye. When a wealthy aristocrat (played deliciously by Alan Rickman) takes a liking to Todd’s wife and arranges for the young barber to arrested and deported, any goodness inside Sweeney dies.

Appropriately enough, Burton’s rendition begins with a foggy night at sea, the coal black hull of a boat slicing through the mist, Sweeney en route to London with vengeance on his mind. He reconnects with Mrs. Lovett (Carter), a sickly operator of a struggling meat pie restaurant who, it turns out, always had the hots for Sweeney during his earlier days. Together, they forge a most unusual business arrangement: Mrs. Lovett helps Sweeney set up his 2nd floor barbershop, and the murderous stylist kicks his parade of victims down a laundry chute, where Mrs. Lovett gets pound after pound of no-fee, Grade A meat.

It’s the movie’s very first kill in the barber’s chair, however, that takes the ho-hum dark humor of the musical and gives it an adrenaline shot of sheer terror. As Sweeney leans over for the kill, putting his blade against a customer’s skin and oh-so-slowly pulling it across the width of his neck, the epic moment of violence becomes that much more unnerving when it doesn’t even register on Sweeney’s face.

As Mrs. Lovett’s meat pie morgue fills up, and the ounces of blood in Sweeney’s shop quickly converts to gallons, the effect of Burton’s violence is undeniable. In making the gore explicit, Burton flips the story’s dynamics, making our antihero every bit as evil and vindictive as that aristocrat who once upon a time destroyed his family. Sure, this demon barber is not abducting women and children, not imprisoning innocent men and jettisoning them off to sea, but he is slaughtering innocents left and right, in brutal fashion. As he implodes, Sweeney seems determined to take as many others down with him.

It’s a twist that will — and should — keep some audiences away, chiefly those who want a fun night at the movies rather than a haunting, harrowing profile of an unstoppable killer. But for others, it’s a decision that gives this already heavy-handed material a serious jolt of grown-up scrutiny.

All things considered, Sweeney Todd has not achieved anything through his murderous quest, not achieved catharsis, nor set the memory of his wife or daughter free; he’s merely a broken shell of a man who has managed to make the word a little worse. It’s more uncomfortable watching Tim Burton’s blood-soaked interpretation, but it’s also more convincing, suggesting that once a man is broken in this fashion, there’s little that will ever make him whole again.