Sherlock Holmes and
the Case of the Silk Stockings
Director:
Simon Cellan Jones Year: 2004 Rating:
7.0
You can find Sherlock Holmes films in every nook and cranny it seems. This
one was up on YouTube but I had never heard of it and expected total mediocrity.
Still it's Holmes and I always like to see how the actors interpret him.
This turned out to be a fine Sherlock Holmes movie and Rupert Everett is
a fine Holmes. Everett has made a career of portraying upper class Brits
with a quick retort and an imperious attitude. His own life of privilege
growing up prepared him for this. His Holmes is a less than congenial
who finds everyone wanting - even Watson. With his pasty pancaked face and
indolent expressions of boredom he is almost androgynous in his behavior.
His main desire seems to be opium and that is where this begins.
Holmes has been holed up in an opium den for three days making love to the
hookah pipe. When he finally leaves, Watson (Ian Hart - John Lennon in Backbeat)
is waiting for him. Holmes is already bored but Watson - played quite smartly
for a change - shows him a photo of a murdered girl found next to the Thames.
A case. This is what he needs to rise out of his torpor. This is not connected
to any of Doyle's writings unless I missed one in which a serial killer with
a foot fetish is murdering young girls by strangling them with stockings.
Someone is snatching girls from the top layer of society right out of their
homes, taking them somewhere, murdering them ritually and leaving their corpse
conspicuously in sight. London seems to be in perpetual fog and I think it
must be taking place in 1905 when London had one of their periodic fog-ins
that cause the deaths of so many.
Good period detail and well-acted with a good degree of suspense. Not too
surprising once I realized that BBC was behind it and I was disappointed
to see that they made no more with Everett. Appearing also before he became
famous is Michael Fassbender in a large role.
