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#752 - Mr. Holmes
Bill Condon, 2015
An elderly gentleman who was once a legendary detective retires to a cottage in the countryside finds himself puzzling over the final case he ever worked.
Considering how potentially interesting the prospect of seeing an iconic fictitious character confront their advancing age and impending mortality can be, it's rather disappointing that the most prominent modern examples of such tend to play such a situation for light humour - look no further than a sexagenarian Schwarzenegger declaring himself "old, not obsolete" in Terminator: Genisys or old-school secret agents like James Bond and Ethan Hunt defying their detractors by deftly carrying out all manner of life-threatening missions. Mr. Holmes opts to take a certain much-adapted Arthur Conan Doyle character and examine his experiences during his final years in order to provide a more meditative counter to recent action-packed outings starring the likes of Robert Downey Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch. It reflects this through an ambitious inter-mingling of three separate narratives. The core narrative sees a now-retired Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) returning to his country home following a recent journey to Japan. As he re-adjusts to life around his cottage, interactions with the lonely son (Milo Parker) of his war-widow housekeeper (Laura Linney) lead to him reflecting on two prior experiences. One concerns the events of his trip to Japan in search of a plant with healing properties, while the other naturally involves his last case that begins when a worried husband (Patrick Kennedy) hires him to investigate the rather peculiar activities of his wife (Hattie Morahan).
Having a renowned actor like McKellen in the role of Holmes certainly lends Mr. Holmes enough gravitas to prevent it from becoming too stuffy even for a British period drama, though he doesn't exactly disappear into the role like other actors tend to do. Other performers vary in ability - Parker proves an adequate child actor who does well enough at acting against a juggernaut like McKellen, while Linney struggles to overcome a dubious Irish accent in order to sell her own conflicted character. Not too much else of note goes on in the acting department save perhaps Hiroyuki Sanada's turn as Holmes's Japanese contact, who gets some weighty enough material to work with even in what is arguably the weakest of the film's three separate storylines. Despite the film's relatively brief length, it still threatens to grow too slow and labourious for its own good as it jumps haphazardly between the separate narratives. It's sprinkled with clever references to canonical Holmes factoids and how McKellen's Holmes regards his famous image with some disdainful amusement (best exemplified by the sequence where he visits a cinema that's playing a film based on his exploits), though that only goes so far in providing any distinction to an otherwise dry combination of mystery and drama.
Bill Condon, 2015
An elderly gentleman who was once a legendary detective retires to a cottage in the countryside finds himself puzzling over the final case he ever worked.
Considering how potentially interesting the prospect of seeing an iconic fictitious character confront their advancing age and impending mortality can be, it's rather disappointing that the most prominent modern examples of such tend to play such a situation for light humour - look no further than a sexagenarian Schwarzenegger declaring himself "old, not obsolete" in Terminator: Genisys or old-school secret agents like James Bond and Ethan Hunt defying their detractors by deftly carrying out all manner of life-threatening missions. Mr. Holmes opts to take a certain much-adapted Arthur Conan Doyle character and examine his experiences during his final years in order to provide a more meditative counter to recent action-packed outings starring the likes of Robert Downey Jr. or Benedict Cumberbatch. It reflects this through an ambitious inter-mingling of three separate narratives. The core narrative sees a now-retired Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) returning to his country home following a recent journey to Japan. As he re-adjusts to life around his cottage, interactions with the lonely son (Milo Parker) of his war-widow housekeeper (Laura Linney) lead to him reflecting on two prior experiences. One concerns the events of his trip to Japan in search of a plant with healing properties, while the other naturally involves his last case that begins when a worried husband (Patrick Kennedy) hires him to investigate the rather peculiar activities of his wife (Hattie Morahan).
Having a renowned actor like McKellen in the role of Holmes certainly lends Mr. Holmes enough gravitas to prevent it from becoming too stuffy even for a British period drama, though he doesn't exactly disappear into the role like other actors tend to do. Other performers vary in ability - Parker proves an adequate child actor who does well enough at acting against a juggernaut like McKellen, while Linney struggles to overcome a dubious Irish accent in order to sell her own conflicted character. Not too much else of note goes on in the acting department save perhaps Hiroyuki Sanada's turn as Holmes's Japanese contact, who gets some weighty enough material to work with even in what is arguably the weakest of the film's three separate storylines. Despite the film's relatively brief length, it still threatens to grow too slow and labourious for its own good as it jumps haphazardly between the separate narratives. It's sprinkled with clever references to canonical Holmes factoids and how McKellen's Holmes regards his famous image with some disdainful amusement (best exemplified by the sequence where he visits a cinema that's playing a film based on his exploits), though that only goes so far in providing any distinction to an otherwise dry combination of mystery and drama.