Mr. Holmes * * 1/2

Poor old Sherlock Holmes is everybody's bitch these days. 

There’s the Guy Ritchie films, heaps of TV productions, and a stack of books, all with modern-takes, presumptuous sequels, untold stories etc.  I don't know what Arthur Conan Doyle would make of it (or my observation).

A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin is another such book and Mr.Holmes, starring Ian McKellen, is based upon it.

For some reason people go all reverential about Ian McKellen.  I am sure if you tossed him a Shakespeare play and put him on the stage he’d knock your socks off: but let’s be honest, most of us have only seen him in film, and the majority of his film work has been unremarkable and not particularly challenging, what with Hobbits and X-Men and other such fantasy based roles.

This time Ian McKellen gets to play the great detective and he does actually impress (at times) and show his skills (at times), which is just as well, as his stagey performance is about the only thing that shines in this otherwise tedious film.

It’s just after the Second World War and Sherlock Holmes is having a painful retirement, knowing that some matters in his life remain unresolved.  We find Holmes in his modest country home ageing and troubled as he recalls a case which ended in tragedy because he couldn’t help the client through her impossible dilemma.  He is writing out the incident as a story and we watch it in flashback.  But matters are complicated as we learn he also has the beginning of dementia. Are his recollections correct?

There is also a third story.  In flashback we see his recent visit to Japan to address another incident of family heartache that he might have contributed to.

  Three narratives: His current situation and two incidents from his past. You’d think one of them would grab you wouldn’t you? Not me, I’m afraid.

Mr. Holmes, is a prettily photographed film, but by the end I was so bored I didn’t care about him or the people in his recollections.   

It moves at a dreadfully slow pace and most of the action is not action at all.  His detective work is like something from an Enid Blyton Famous Five story. He is always managing to eavesdrop at exactly the right time to overhear a revealing word or two spoken to the person he is following: “This is deadly poison … mumble mumble” says the apothecary “The final will is in your name … mumble mumble” says the solicitor, as Holmes hovers in their doorways taking mental notes whilst inconspicuously wearing a frock coat and top hat.

Of the three strands, the story set in Holmes present day is probably the best, showing Holmes as a grumpy old man attending to his apiary and dependent upon his begrudging assistant, who is a war widow, and her son with whom he builds a warm and caring relationship. I was happy to accept this as story enough until it dished up an utterly ludicrous final scene that only a contemporary American writer, who also wants to make Sherlock Holmes his bitch, could have dreamt up.