Mr Holmes

Mr Holmes is verging on his 94th birthday and is begining to show his age. He is not the Holmes of story or legend, no far from it. He is a grumpy, mentally confused old man. He has returned from a trip to Japan in order to find a cure for his senile mind lapses and forgetfulness. What he has found over there however was a admiring man and the beginning to a solution for his last unresolved case. Now at his retirement home on the coast, with his young housekeepers son in tow, the story will become complete.

In my younger days I was a Sherlock fan. I remember the books about life after Watson and the cases unreported by Doyle. The duel with the ripper, Holmes the drug addict and of course the murder of Watson himself. They amazed me when I read of Holmes as an independant operator or outside of the prose of Doyle. These ideas have for this film been supplanted and the new tale has been relocated to a world separated from the legend. So It was with much interest that I sat down to watch this film and in truth I was satisfied with the results. The film is clever in places and enough so that it makes you work for it. The story benefits from a great cast and a very good director of place and people. Condon knows pace as well and he knows the limited of ideas in execution. This means that like his best film Gods and Monsters, he knows what to show and how best to keep it relevant. McKellen is very good and has the old gump down without ham or without harming the main source material. This is simply to say the way the audience perceive Holmes is unaffected.

If you take out the films story and cast, you are left with a great looking and sounding film. The look is well held and the space is almost magentic with its soft light and country atmosphere. Visually the film looks great on the DVD and the sound from the DVD has this warm note well captured. The extras are a bundle of interviews and add little texture but little else. Overall a Sunday night to savour...