• Title: Mr. Holmes
• IMDb: link

Adapted from Mitch Cullen‘s novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, Mr. Holmes is an intriguing, if flawed, idea offering audiences a look at the retired detective fighting senility while struggling to remember the details of his final case decades before. I say flawed because despite a terrific performance from Ian McKellen removing the keen intellect from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes also removes the character’s most definable trait leaving only a hollow shell in its place.

Taking place three decades after his retirement into the country to spend his time with his bees, a senile and grumpy Sherlock Holmes struggles to remember the details of his final case which he is certain Watson wrongly chronicled. His secluded existence is witnessed only by his housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), her son Roger (Milo Parker), and the occasional visit from Sherlock’s doctor (Roger Allam). Returning from a trip to Japan at the opening of the film, which is chronicled in flashbacks inter-cut with those of his final case and his current retirement, Holmes strikes up an unexpected friendship with Roger who helps reignite the detective’s memory.

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