Review - Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking

[jack]

I thought it was pretty good. Holmes and Watson seemed a lot more human than in many interpretations. I thought Holmes' addictions and ennui fit very well with some things hinted at. I loved to see Watson happily engaged¹, and liked that he took a more proactive role, drawing Holmes into the case rather than just following. And Holmes's arrogance seemed to fit very well, especially if you explain but not excuse it with the tortured addict but. He wasn't perfect, indeed, messing about with clever traps without some decent backup was a big blunder. But the flaw makes the character more interesting, and it is exactly the sort of flaw someone like him would have. OTOH, somehow he didn't *look* like Holmes.

I thought the bit where he stood at the edge of the roof tossing pennies into the fog, and then made a blind leap, and you realised he'd been judging the distance by seeing which one didn't fall was perfect holmes, but not as much as when he calmly picked them up after. Describing himself as the second best criminologist when in his fat pompous foreign boor desguise was good too.

The twins thing was a bit of a let down. It does make sense, but its become a convention imho in crime fiction that there isn't an identical twin without warning, since that's always a possibility and eliminating it just wastes valuble screen time. The weird dominant foot fetish thing I guess made sense, but I felt might have been slightly overdone²

[1] Though would probably give purists heart attacks, I don't think the books are even consistent on how many wives he has...
[2] In context, yes, bdsm can be overdone :)

Comments

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I quite liked it myself. At first I watched with an air of disapproval, as I do all remakes/book-adaptations/sequels/prequels/reimaginings (last is a reference to the absolutely terrible Tim Burton version of Planet of the Apes). But I got rather into it, and although some bits didn't ring quite true (opiate injections?), the whole effect was really quite good. Posh accents weren't perfect (and they should have been - there are still some who speak the way a Victorian memeber of the high aristocracy would have done), plot was slightly lame towards the end, and I think Holmes was a little too... physical for my liking (compare with my view of Dr Who, spoiled by Paul McGann - who is otherwise a great actor, btw).

On the whole, though, I liked it. And Rupert Everett started to be exactly how I expected Holmes (or maybe mutated my perception until it felt like I'd always imagined Holmes that way). He was no Basil Rathbone, and therefore inevitably inferior, but he was better than other adaptations' Holmes, and most importantly he was good enough.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

> somehow he didn't *look* like Holmes.

Too many muscles.