Sherlock Holmes is everywhere once again. The illustrious detective is currently featured in two TV series, Elementary and Sherlock, as well as looming large on the big screen in Guy Ritchie’s SHERLOCK HOLMES series starring Robert Downey Jr. Getting yet another version of Sherlock Holmes can understandably feel like a bit much, but I think that Bill Condon’s MR. HOLMES will offer quite a different perspective in relation to everything that has come before.
MR. HOLMES, based on Mitch Cullin's novel "A Slight Trick of the Mind", premiered earlier in the year at the Berlin International Film Festival but had not yet secured a wide release. Well it looks like we’ll be seeing the film sooner rather than later as Roadside Attractions and Miramax have announced that they will premiere the film on July 17, 2015.
Set in 1947, an aging Holmes returns from a journey to Japan, where, in search of a rare plant with powerful restorative qualities, he saw firsthand the devastation of nuclear warfare. Now facing the end of his days with only the company of his housekeeper and her young son, Holmes grapples with fading powers of his mind as he searches for answers to the mysteries of life and love before it's too late.
The modern Sherlock Holmes mysteries usually move at quite a brisk pace, so the chance to view a Holmes mystery with more of a slow burn feel is greatly appealing to me; plus who would pass up the chance to see Sir Ian McKellen tackle the role?
"My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world."