Director: Bill Condon

Starring: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hattie Morohan, Patrick Kennedy, Hiroyuki Sanada

Sherlock Holmes has had somewhat of a resurgence in the last decade. Between Guy Ritchie’s films, the British television series Sherlock and the American series Elementary, the original super sleuth is once again front-of-mind. Rather than piggybacking on the popularity of these other texts, Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes presents itself as an alternative, even an antidote, to the current Holmes craze.

Adapted from the Mitch Cullin novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, this is no modernised, stylised, cool Sherlock Holmes. Rather, we are presented with Holmes (Ian McKellen) as a 93 year old man. Having long since retired and moved out of Baker St, with Watson and Mrs Hudson both deceased, Holmes now resides in a country house in Sussex with his housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her inquisitive son Roger (Milo Parker). While still a keen observer with sharp deductive skills, in his old age Holmes’s memory is starting to fail him. He is working away at his memoirs, trying to set the record straight and record the real versions of the stories that Watson had mythologised. Continue reading →