MR HOLMES is a clever conceit that unfortunately never goes anywhere. The plot sees an aged Holmes in 1947 living in self-imposed exile in a remote village, with only his widowed housekeeper, her son and his bees for company. Spurred on by a recent visit to Japan (cue the inevitable shots of the devastation in Hiroshima), he tries to recollect and write down his last case - the one which caused him to go into exile - which involved a beautiful woman in the 1920s. The dementia allows the filmmakers to make effective use of flashbacks to tell the story but otherwise it's an over-predictable British period drama: superb actors, excellent production design and beautiful landscapes...but nothing to say. Life in exile is not that interesting - McKellen's brilliant performance aside - and the final case is almost absurdly slight. It all culminates with Holmes, the man of logic, deciding that sometimes fiction is superior to fact; the sad truth is that the popularly- imagined Sherlock, with his pipe and deerstalker and impossibly precise deductions, is rather more interesting than this somewhat dull intellectual chamber piece.
Review of Mr. Holmes
