Mr. Holmes

Mr. Holmes is about how the past defines us. It is also very much about regret and trying to put things right.

Anyone expecting opera and opium will be disappointed. But a majestic McKellen rescues a safe script, giving us a fresh look at an icon even the most casual viewer will be (over)familar with.

Condon and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher reward your patience by bringing the threads together in a beautiful, stirring manner that celebrates the genius of the literary icon while also honoring the man McKellen is playing.

The film’s plots are soft and flimsy, and they don’t mesh as gracefully as they might, but they do serve as an adequate trellis for Mr. McKellen’s performance, which is gratifyingly but unsurprisingly wonderful.

A satisfyingly fresh take on a character we all only thought we knew well.

This is Holmes intentionally slowed down to a hobbling, reflective, end-of-life pace: dare we call it refreshing? It’s a film to rummage around in, picking up old clues, considering their meaning, and turning them in your palm.

Bill Condon ignores the delights and hardships of becoming an artist in lieu of simply presenting the long-touted liberating effects of art.

We were unsure of what to expect from this film, but went on the strength of liking Ian McKellen. Graceful and meditatively slow, this film unfolds like a rare blossom. Fine acting, a deft camera and a moving story...wonderful!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I first became aware of Ian McKellen as a gay activist when he publicly came out against a law in England in 1988. I was aware of his being an admired stage British actor who occasionally made films and then, after he came out, I saw him in “And The Band Played On” and “6 Degrees of Separation” but it was 17 years ago in a movie called “Gods and Monsters”, for which he won an Oscar nomination, that I was really impressed with him. The general movie going public came to know him as Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings” for which he received a second Oscar nomination. He is now regarded as one of the world’s best actors and is widely known as a role model for the gay community all over. Now, 17 years after “Gods and Monsters”, he is reunited with director Bill Condon to make “Mr. Holmes”, a story about the real Sherlock Holmes at the age of 93, retired, looking at his last case which took place 27 years earlier. McKellan, in his 70s, plays Holmes at 93, 66 and 58 believable at all stages with a lot of help from make-up artist Dave Elsey, and his crew, along with the actor‘s movements at the different ages. This Sherlock Holmes is not the Sherlock Holmes you know, telling an admirer that it was Watson who fictionalized his character, giving him a deerstalker hat which he never wore and a pipe when he preferred a cigar, giving the readers a wrong address as to where he lived though the detective did and still has that precision and deductions that solved his mysteries and solves a present day situation. He is now a beekeeper in his old age along with following the search for ‘**** ash’ to help him with his memory which is failing. Based on a screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher from a book by Mitch Cullin (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who?) it revolves around Holmes, his housekeeper Mrs. Munro, played by Laura Linney, in a role she could have done in her sleep but doesn’t, and her son Roger, (Milo Parker), who lost his father at a very young age, a clever somewhat precocious 10 year old who becomes devoted to Holmes and who Holmes comes to see as a remarkable child. There is a side trip story regarding Japan and a Japanese mother and her son whose husband/father abandoned them to serve England in the war, which really doesn’t bring much to the movie. Another part of the screenplay is Holmes’s last mystery with Patrick Kennedy as Thomas Kelmot who thinks his wife Ann, played by Hattie Morahan, is cheating on him. There is also Nicholas Rowe, who plays the fictional Sherlock Holmes in a film being watched by the ‘real’ Sherlock Holmes and in a wasted role Frances de la Tour as a eccentric music teacher. Ian McKellen is a delight to watch, Laura Linney, in a dark wig, is powerful in a brief scene near the end with him and Milo Parker has chemistry with McKellen but I found myself walking up the aisle, after the credits, giving it a one word review in my mind, ‘disappointment’, which may be my fault expecting too much from another pairing of Condon and McKellen.

I went with my whole family to see this movie, and we were expecting to see some big interesting plot for a story about the final investigation of Sherlock Holmes. Instead what we got is a movie without any rhyme or reason, with horrible characters and even worse side stories. You know a movie is bad when there is half of it you can skip and won't be missing anything because of it. I would recommend watching the 2009 movie instead of this, the difference it's like night and day. In conclusion: I felt like a 93 years old with Alzheimer / 10

My husband and I both found the English dialect very very difficult to understand and the plot (was there one??) almost impossible to follow. Only occasionally would we understand what was going on. We are frequent movie goers and enjoy classic films but this one left both of us saying this was the very worst film we've seen in years. We even fell asleep! So sad. Holmes had possibilities but they were certainly missed in this film.