Sherlock Holmes: Incident at Victoria Falls

There's no doubt that, given the cast, this could have been a rousing good Sherlock Holmes film. Unfortunately, the producers decided to go for the mini-series. Bad move! The film we have left drags in moments, the story is overly convoluted with plot elements going nowhere, the pacing lags.

Still, Lee and MacNee make an excellent Holmes-Watson duo, and most of the acting is really good for a television project of this kind. The mystery elements, when we finally get them, are on a par with that of better Holmes material - although they often feel somewhat borrowed from Christie-Poirot films. The denouement is satisfying in a quirky way, as it involves playing fast and loose with history.

Enjoyable for a viewing - the second half is probably the superior, but that's a matter of taste.

Like many fans on Sherlock, I will watch just about any interpretation over some 75 years that the character has been in cinema. This is a plot loosely based on the original story. The material is elevated by Mr Lee's performance. His wry take on Holmes made it enjoyable for me.

On the eve of his retirement to bee keeping heaven, Sherlock Holmes is summoned to the palace, where King Edward requests one last mission for the super sleuth, to travel to Sth Africa and protect the Star of Africa diamond from those who would claim it as their own. The film is hardly of Doyle quality but what it lacks in authenticity it makes up for in a Sunday afternoon mystery kind of way. At 3 hours long every situation is used to the max and the film has some good set pieces. Christopher Lee is not the ideal Holmes, he's a little too nice, he even has tome to flirt with women…..Bah Partick Macnee as Watson is out of the bumbling Nigel Bruce school of Watson's and is quite likable. The film doesn't take itself too seriously however and is played for laughs on many occasions.

1910. At the behest of King Edward VII Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson set off for Cape Town. The Star of Africa, the largest diamond in the world, is being shipped to England and Holmes is to ensure that it reaches the King safely. In South Africa Holmes discovers that not only is a plan afoot to steal the diamond but the perpetrators are willing to resort to murder to achieve their ends.

An original Sherlock Holmes story, i.e. Not adapted from a book or short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and it's a mixed bag. On the positive side we have Christopher Lee whose portrayal of Sherlock Holmes is fantastic, giving him a great sense of intelligence and gravitas. The scenery and cinematography are great too, making you feel you really are in Africa in 1910. And yes, some of the scenes were actually filmed at Victoria Falls!

The plot is reasonably interesting though this is where the problems start to come. The film clocks in at over three hours due to the myriad of sub-plots filling up the time. Some of these are needed for the main plot but some are just padding or could have been less elaborate.

The fact that the writer throws in characters like President Roosevelt and Lillie Langtry, shows just how padded some of the sub-plots are. Those particular characters didn't have to be somebody famous but the writers did it just to create a sub-plot out of their fame and for a bit of a wow factor. (Incidentally, Lillie Langtry was 57 years old in 1910 and is 30-something in the movie, so the writer didn't do their research very well).

Overall it's interesting enough to be watchable but with a more focused plot and a decent degree of editing it could have been great.

Incident at Victoria Falls brings Christopher Lee already shows a slight sign of depletion, even so made an usual Sherlock performance, allied by the funny Dr. John Watson (Patrick Macnee), the screenplay is acceptable, although overlong between comings and goings, also has another element to enhance the plot, attach famous character on the story as the former US's President Theodore Roosevelt (Claude Akins) and also the legendary Marconi (Stephen Gurney), Sherlock has a mission to bring to England the huge diamond "Star of Africa" trying misleading the security and try out avoid the upcoming robbery, sadly it happens before Holmes put his bold plan on action, now the duo have try found out among dozen suspects the criminal mastermind, on a fabulous landscape at Victoria Falls, where one by one has been killed under suspicious circumstances, despite the picture is overlong had a rush conclusion, it's sounds odd, due had enough time to savour a best ending, average production!!!

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First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 6.5