La revanche de Sherlock Holmes

Stage, screen, and television adaptations or features using Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters turn on one simple, inescapable point: do we believe the actor as Holmes? If the answer is yes, then a bad story is still pretty good. If the answer is no, then whatever other attractions the story holds are worthless.

The answer here is clearly yes: Rupert Everett is very good as Sherlock Holmes. The transfer from print to screen is almost flawless. If anything, too much is made of Holmes' obvious flaws as a human being: his recreational drug use, patronizing arrogance, indifference to the feelings of others, preoccupation with the workings of his own mind. This Holmes reminds me of Dorian Gray. It is only his love of solving crimes that keeps him from committing them.

The story is pretty pedestrian. This isn't quite as bad as "the butler did it," but it's close. I won't spoil the movie as others here have by saying more. I liked the scenes where Holmes is reasoning out who the killer is. This was clever, unforeseen, and quite believable. But, from the time the chief suspect is identified, until he was finally caught .. the entire climax of the movie, in other words .. was ..well, trite, clichéd, and elementary, my dear Watson ..

Kudos to Helen McCrory and Perdita Weeks in supporting performances.

Apart from the names Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, there's really nothing to connect this original BBC TV movie to the original Conan Doyle stories. It's a return to the old wartime Basil Rathbone films, set in the wrong period, packed with anachronistic detail, and which fails to pay even lip service to Holmes's famous method. It's a poorly written modern police drama right down to the obligatory, clunking serial killer plot. It's just dressed in period costume. Even the plot twist about the killer's identity comes in Edwardian dress, as it could only ever possibly fresh and original in disguise pretending to be a story written a hundred years ago.

The story constantly forces modern elements incongruously into Holmes's necessarily, fundamentally low tech world. The story is set some time after the Victorian era of the classic Holmes stories, apparently to justify the use of telephones and modern police techniques like fingerprinting. Watson is about to marry an American psychiatrist, which opens the door to the modern serial killer psychodrama whose emphasis is on woolly sexual motivation and grotesque patterns of behaviour, worlds away from the traditional Holmes story where logic and deduction solve single victim locked room murders. The oddly un-Edwardian London police set up an incongruous, modern incident room to collate the information about their spiralling body count. In one scene Holmes spins around this room staring helplessly at photographs and maps, unable to connect fact and incident, which reduces the finest logical detective mind in the world to the level of "Inspector X" in any paint-by-numbers police series. Eventually Inpector Lestrade himself time-travels to the 1970s to give a suspect an Sweeney-style kicking to make him talk.

Rupert Everett as Holmes drifts through the first half of the story like someone on a mixture of recreational drugs, which is clearly the writer's deliberate intention. Trying to exploit the radical elements in Holmes's character the story inflates his drug use out of proportion. Conan Doyle saddled his creation with a habit of injecting cocaine, but there is never any suggestion that Holmes had a narcotic monkey on his back. He claims his 7 per cent solution stimulates his mind in times of boredom, a world away from the use of soporifics to deaden his brain.

Ironically it seems that in order to make these seasonal specials featuring Holmes himself the BBC abandoned its own excellent Holmes homage, the quite superb Murder Rooms, which succeeded in every respect that this film fails, injecting modern style and sensibilities while still honouring the source material. They were faithful in period detail and in many respects to the type of detective story which suits the Holmes character, and where they took a post-modern approach were able to underscore rather than undermine the quality of the original. It begs the question, as they clearly have access to writers with the talent to produce this kind of work, why didn't they use them here? Even more ironically, in the UK while this film was one of the main planks of the BBC's Christmas 2004 season evening schedule, the BBC have also been showing daytime repeats of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. The strength of this performance, and the faithfulness to the original material, casts the poor work here into sharp relief.

I'll admit it. I'm a big Holmes fan. I think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could really write. However, this cute little TV movie leaves something to be desired... although I'm not sure what. (Yes, I do type like this after watching old movies. No, I don't like it, either.) Jeremy Brett - the other Holmes I've seen - was creepy at first, but he sort of grew on you until you no longer thought of him as an actor, but as Holmes himself. Everett... just... no. I don't find eyelashes very professional-looking.

I'm fairly sure that this was written from scratch - basically, that Sir Doyle didn't write it. This explains a few parts that are a bit ... well, dubious. Also, the perpetrators?! I know, there are lots of other outrageous solutions in the Holmes series, but still, it seems like a silly way to solve a mystery. "Hey, let's write a Sherlock Holmes with SOCKS and have TWI-" oops, nearly gave it away. Moving on...

One thing to note is that I liked this Watson more than other one. He seems a bit more alive then Hardwicke. That's always good.

6/10 - Worth a watch, if you like Sherlock Holmes. Otherwise, you may want to rent a nice Harry Potter.

As a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I was looking forward to "Silk Stocking," but was very disappointed with Rupert Everett's performance. He gave the distinct impression of being bored all the way through. Also, I was surprised by the scene of him shooting up during the case. My understanding of the "real" Holmes is that he was bored in between cases, and that's when he enjoyed his 7% solution. When in the midst of a case, he was excited and engaged and focused -- none of which Everett showed in his performance. My favorite Holmes remains Jeremy Brett, who showed actual modulation in Holmes' personality (irritation and boredom before the case presented itself; excitement, sometimes to a bizarre extent, during a case; rapture at listening to a classical concert etc.) rather than the sleepy, Johnny-one-note performance of Everett. Four snores.

I am a really avid fan of all things Sherlock Holmes. I have all the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce original movies and all the Jeremy Brett Telefilms and series.

I also have the excellent 1959 Hammer 'HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES' with wonderful Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes (FWIW, I have like 8 different versions of that movie... : ) And, the later, not as well known 1985 film 'THE MASKS OF DEATH' also starring Peter Cushing as Holmes.

And, a LOT more... :D

So, in going into this movie I was curious as to how Rupert Everett would be in the starring role. Well, I honestly thought he did a very good job. Watson actually took a bit longer to get used to, but both I feel did a genuinely good job in portraying these famous characters.

Also, what gives the movie a lot of strength is the story itself. Not to mention, the excellent atmosphere and the very adept way it was directed and written.

Another thing I really liked was that with the way the characters were developed, you really had a strong emotional connection to both the good and the bad guys. I tell you, that one Duke or whomever the hell he was was SO damn pompous, I swear I really wanted to kick his bottom! So yes, the characterization all around was done very well.

A very compelling story, almost along the lines of a Jack the Ripper with a very effective atmosphere, something if you are a Holmes fan at all you should really find entertaining.

I gave it a strong '7'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~MY PARTICULAR WAY OF RATING:

5 - Flawed, but with some entertainment value.

6. A decently passable story maybe worth a watch.

7. A solid film, well made, effective, and entertaining.

And, obviously, you can probably figure out what above and below these would mean... : )