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Despite Depp, 'The Libertine' is mired in a murky fog

At the very beginning of "The Libertine," Johnny Depp, dressed in full Restoration regalia, steps up to the camera and announces, "You will not like me."

Alas, it's his movie we don't like. Depp, for all his debauchery as the notorious 17th-century poet and, well, libertine, John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, remains impossible to dislike. Even at the end, when his nose has fallen off (thanks to a case of the clap) and is replaced by what appears to be a silver bullet. Handy, one guesses, for any lurking werewolves in London.

The Weinstein Company 'The Libertine' D+ The verdict: Debauchery rarely has been this tedious. Director: Laurence Dunmore Starring: John Malkovich, Johnny Depp, Samantha Morton, Rosamund Pike, Tom Hollander Run time: 110 minutes Release date: March 10, 2006 Rating: R for strong sexuality including dialogue, violence and language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'The Libertine'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

What's really roaming the filthy streets of the city in the mid-1600s are thieves and fops, whores and peddlers, dandies and drunks. King Charles II (John Malkovich, "acting" in a pretty impressive false proboscis of his own) has returned the good times to Britain after the joyless Puritanism of the Roundheads.

Wilmot and his pretty, long-suffering wife ("Pride & Prejudice's" Rosamund Pike) are summoned back to court from their banishment in the country. Charles wants him to do for his reign what Shakespeare did for Queen Elizabeth's: make him look good for the ages. But the merry monarch, of all people, should know not to trust bad boys who party hearty.

When he's not whoring and drinking himself to death, Wilmot coaches a determined young actress (a very strong Samantha Morton) in the Method about 400 years before it existed. Billy Crudup did much the same thing for Claire Danes in the far superior "Stage Beauty," which shares this movie's setting and king (infinitely better played by Rupert Everett).

Adapting his own play, Stephen Jeffreys can't shake the script's essential staginess. And first-time feature director Laurence Dunmore, who made his reputation in advertising and music videos, can't coax the movie to life. The scenes between Depp and Morton throw off sparks, but the movie as a whole needs focus, oomph. Reported last-minute budget cuts don't help. Dunmore's London is impossibly murky — as if he's trying to disguise the fact that the actors are working in front of, I don't know, a London made out of a bedsheet and a fog machine.

Still, there's Depp, who makes Wilmot a sort of R- (maybe X-) rated Jack Sparrow, rakish and answering to no one. To his credit, he never courts us. Nor does he mind being covered with syphilitic sores.

This riveting actor knows what he's doing. Unfortunately, his film is lost in a fake London fog.