Mr. Holmes

For F*** Magazine

MR. HOLMES

Director : Bill Condon
Cast : Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Hiroyuki Sanada, Hattie Morahan, Patrick Kennedy, Milo Parker
Genre : Drama/Mystery
Run Time : 104 mins
Opens : 6 August 2015
Rating : PG

Sherlock Holmes – he’s the greatest detective who ever detected, the greatest sleuth who ever sleuthed and the greatest crime-solver who ever, uh, solved crimes. In this film, we find Sherlock (McKellen) in his twilight years. It is 1947 and a 93-year-old Sherlock has long since retired from detective work, living in a remote farmhouse in Sussex with housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Linney) and her young son Roger (Parker). Holmes has taken up beekeeping, harvesting royal jelly in the hopes of improving his failing memory. He makes a trip to Hiroshima, meeting up with plant enthusiast Matsuda Umezaki (Sanada) in search of the fabled prickly ash, which Sherlock hopes will prove more effective in staving off senility than the royal jelly. In the meantime, he revisits his final case, the case that brought about his self-exile, a case involving the mysterious married woman with a peculiar obsession (Monahan).

The Guinness Book of World Records lists Sherlock Holmes, originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the “most portrayed movie character”. The iconic detective has been played by over 70 actors in more than 200 films and to call Sir Ian McKellen a worthy addition to that pantheon would be an understatement. The character has been through myriad interpretations in his nearly 130 years of existence and Mr. Holmes can stand alongside the recent contemporary re-imaginings of the character, each take bringing something different to the table. This film is based on Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of Mind, adapted by screenwriter and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Modern audiences have grown enamoured with the BBC series featuring Benedict Cumberbatch’s mercurial, misanthropic Sherlock paired with Martin Freeman’s harried everyman Dr. Watson. Here, we find that Sherlock and Watson’s partnership has dissolved and that Watson has been writing fictionalised accounts of Sherlock’s cases. This is Sherlock at a point of his life that we don’t see too often, but he is by no means less interesting a character.

The film is slowly paced and while there is an element of mystery, it is intended that the audience be captured not by a whodunit but by the enigma of the title character himself. There is a sense of scope to the tale, which sees Sherlock visit a post-Second World War Japan. A moment in which he sees a woman scarred by radiation poisoning and stops in his tracks, shaken, is effectively haunting. A good deal of the film is spent on the bond the elderly Sherlock forms with the precocious Roger, played by Milo Parker, a child actor very much in the Thomas Brodie-Sangster mould. This relationship is given meaningful development rather than being superficially twee. The primary conflict arises from Mrs. Munro’s concern that her son is spending too much time with Sherlock and chasing intellectual pursuits when she means for him to live and work at an inn her sister runs. This feels believable and earned.

The film also takes a meta-fictional look at the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes, with Sherlock directly addressing the depiction of him wearing a deerstalker hat and smoking a pipe, calling these mere embellishments of Watson’s illustrator. In an amusing scene, Sherlock goes to see a movie based on a book Watson has written about him – the actor playing Sherlock in this film-within-a-film is portrayed by Nicholas Rowe, who played Sherlock in 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes. There is the sense that Sherlock himself is struggling to parse where the legends end and the real person begins. McKellen is able to bring out many colours in his portrayal of Sherlock, fleshing out the character rather than presenting a mere assemblage of tics. Because the use of his mind has been so important to him all his life, it is all the more heart-rending to see Sherlock come to grips with his waning faculties. 

Director Bill Condon paints a picture of Sherlock in which whatever cases the character is working on are secondary, with Sherlock Holmes, “the man beyond the myth” as the tagline puts it, at the fore. For those itching for a whodunit and who derive satisfaction at seeing the great detective unravel labyrinth mysteries, Mr. Holmes won’t quite do the trick. However, as a character study and commentary on the cultural impact of Sherlock Holmes, it is intimate, well-acted and emotional. 

Summary: Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that Mr. Holmes is a character piece rather than a thrilling mystery, it’s easy to embrace Ian McKellen’s stirring portrayal of the iconic detective. 

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars 


Jedd Jong 

The November Man

For F*** Magazine

THE NOVEMBER MAN

Director : Roger Donaldson
Cast : Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Eliza Taylor, Catherine Scorsone, Bill Smitrovich, Will Patton, Lazar Ristovski, Patrick Kennedy
Genre : Action/Thriller
Opens : 28 August 2014
Rating : NC-16 (Sexual Scenes and Violence)
Running time: 108 mins

           In The Tailor of Panama and Matador, Pierce Brosnan played on his persona as the world’s most famous fictional spy. He does it again but in a markedly more serious manner here, as retired CIA agent Peter Devereaux. Devereaux violently barges out of his quiet retirement in picturesque Lausanne, Switzerland to embark on a very personal mission. Social worker Alice Fournier (Kurylenko) has valuable evidence that could topple the political career of Federov (Ristovski), poised to become the next Russian president. Devereaux must protect her to uncover the far-reaching conspiracy but this brings in him conflict with David Mason (Bracey), his former pupil at the CIA. The further Devereaux digs, the more danger he puts him and the few he keeps close to him in, especially when it transpires that a CIA official may have been in cahoots with Federov.

            Based on Bill Granger’s novel There Are No Spies, the seventh in the November Man book series but the first to be adapted, this is a film that is competently made but is filled with elements that aficionados of the espionage thriller genre are likely all too familiar with. The film is built upon the theme of spies entering relationships and having families, only for those they hold dear to become casualties in wars that are not theirs to fight. Veteran director Roger Donaldson has tackled the genre before with No Way Out and The Recruit, now turning out a post-Bourne spy movie that is tough and gritty without being self-consciously so. In the States, this is rated R. The blood, swearing and requisite gratuitous scene set in a strip club go some way to separate it from the PG-13 action thriller pack, if only superficially.

            Brosnan is actually even more convincing as a spy here than in his Bond films over a decade ago. Eschewing the wink-and-a-smile charm he is so famous for, Brosnan plays Devereaux as grizzled and lethal. If he’s planning a Liam Neeson-style “man of geri-action” career ahead, he’s going about it better than, say, Kevin Costner is. He plays the heated confrontations with a surprising amount of intensity, especially given that his Bond was never known for being particularly tough. It’s a pity then that Luke Bracey is bland as Mason, the Australian actor never rising above “standard issue imported Hollywood pretty boy”. A better actor could have made the strained mentor-mentee relationship between Devereaux and Mason more compelling.

            Let’s face it, former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko is known more her exotic, striking appearance than her acting chops. However, she brings a good deal of vulnerability and is also able to bring out the canniness beneath the surface of the Alice Fournier character, offering hints that there is more to her than she is letting on. Lazar Ristovski is also a sufficiently slimy and unlikeable as Federov without overplaying the stereotype.

            While many spy thrillers fall apart as they head into their conclusions, The November Man actually becomes a good deal more interesting in its last act, the twists and reveals effective and somewhat plausible. This doesn’t change that it follows many conventions of the genre and that it is poorly paced, the action sequences few and far between. Some visual clichés are employed too – there’s actually a scene of someone jumping sideways through a door into a room, firing a gun in slow motion. Ultimately, it is Brosnan who makes this worthwhile, kicking ass and taking names far more his wheelhouse than struggling through Abba songs.

Summary: A conventional espionage thriller that mitigates its sense of “been there, done that” by ramping up the tension in the third act. Brosnan’s late-career action hero resurgence also makes this worth a look.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong