Great Film overall

Awesome Movie

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

An original BBC story with Conan Doyle's two main characters Sherlock Holmes (Rupert Everett) and Dr. Watson (Ian Hart), "The Case Of The Silk Stocking" takes place in London in the early 1900s. A young girl of the English aristocracy has been murdered. Some of the story characters are aristocratic and not very likable. Major scenes take place in a high brow, Victorian setting.The plot is clear enough and there's some genuine suspense. But there are too few suspects. I kept waiting for some strange plot twist; it never came. The story's underlying premise I found disappointing. And the solution to the case is revealed too soon.Although Holmes presents many of the traits and mannerisms we would expect from Conan Doyle's original character, in this film, as portrayed by Rupert Everett, the character comes across less intellectual as merely haughty and hostile, not unlike the aristocratic characters into whose world he has entered. Except for the charming young females, the entire bundle of characters is too snooty and superior for my preference.Probably the best element is the editing, which skillfully blends concurrent events in an interesting way and shows character relationships across the entirety of the principal cast. Intermittent background music is nondescript and a bit loud. Costumes and prod design are expertly crafted for a difficult social class and historical era. Color cinematography is indifferent but competent. They went a bit overboard with the fog machine.Well worth a one-time viewing, "The Case Of The Silk Stocking" strikes me as your typically well-directed but assembly-line-produced murder mystery. The result is a modern update of an iconic fictional detective investigating an original, but none too believable, story; by-the-numbers script; and a well-known but miscast actor in the title role.

For over 40 years I have read and re-read "The Complete Sherlock Holmes", and have never found an adaption as far from the original as this one. Even the patriotic versions of the 40s with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are better than this. I gave up after 25 minutes. The only thing close to Conan Doyle's creations are the names of the main characters. Holmes is rude to Watson, who was a friend of Holmes. Here, Watson is portrayed as an annoyance to Holmes. Holmes looks around and announces results, without any of the explanations of why. There is nothing of the atmosphere or feel of late 19th/early 20th century London found in Conan Doyle's work, except maybe fog. This is modern day tripe dressed up in Victorian clothes, or as Holmes might have put it, "The curious incident of a pastiche in the night!"

Hmm... the talent of Rupert Everett as Mr.Holmes saved much in this mystery piece. His performance outranked all the rest of the main characters and perhaps this tells something about the casting of this production.Cinematography was very traditional and even dull - surely decent enough just for television, but it lacks imagination and made the overall experience like just any other mystery. A little bit of cinematographic exploration and creativity would have made all the difference. The directing and cinematography together managed to both grasp and lose the feeling of Victorian England. At times the makers managed to convince the viewer and at times that feeling was lost.The trendy part was of course the affination of modern television for morbid: imagery of post-mortems, close examination of bodies etc. that have absolutely no shock value anymore. The makers did not know how to tighten the atmosphere without these effects and that speaks for itself. A mystery doesn't NEED close examination of bodies to be effective: there are plenty of directors who can squeeze a sense of uneasiness without ever resorting to these.The part of Dr.Watson was not convincing and the acting for Mr.Lestrade was bleak and dull - nothing to write home about. Shame really since these characters DO have a major impact on how Sherlock Holmes stories play out effectively. What bugged me the most was the all-too-brief excursions on how A.C.Doyle perceives Mr.Holmes: his addiction to opium, his ability to concentrate thru playing his beloved violin and his ego. The ego part was there in some extent, but the other two were only scratched upon. It would have been easy to prolong his violin scene and tighten the atmosphere with this aspect, but the director chose only to show that Mr.Holmes plays violin in a more tributory sense than anything else. Shame.At the end of the day this movie reaches above the average of TV-movies and doesn't have to be shamed in the presence of real movies either. But it really lacks tension and atmosphere to be enjoyed more than once. Overall a good set of entertainment, but could have easily been more that just that.

Here's the problem. Holmes is one of our most important literary characters, possibly the most influential. He was the icon of the scientific mind, the rationalizer of human behavior.The problem is that we have no good film versions of the man. His character depends on the nature of his mind. In the stories, we are Watson the observer and we see but do not perceive so discover the workings of this great mind by his watching (and later writing of what we read).With movies, we all watch. We cannot see Holmes watching unless the nature of the character is altered. The Brett Holmes decided to show depth through tense miniexplosions and otherwise brooding.I like this decision better. It has Holmes as an active mind, curious beyond all bounds. Impatient with his own mind which is already many times faster than anyone else's. This means the character has to be taken out of Victorian times and removed from the usual case that Holmes was confronted with. Often they involved rational logic to explain the inexplicable: either apparently psychic phenomenon or the inscrutable criminal mind, often genius.What we have here is an impossibility of the old type: we discover well before the end who is the villain, yet it is impossible. And we have one of the necessary disguises. But the mechanics of the thing is all different. The criminal is one familiar to modern serial killer movies. We understand him (unrealistic or not) and so does the good doctor's fiancé.In this case, it is Watson that provides the successful sleuthing at the end while Holmes remains stymied. The drugs are played up too. It is a bit shocking to one who looks for the books in the movies.But it has the right feel to it. What we want is a brilliant obsessive, someone with deep focus and tremendous reasoning power. But not a superman. Not someone with parlor tricks. We have that here, plus the feel of a man who can barely tolerate women.I wish Rupert were more gaunt and less rugged looking. He seems too strong. The power of the man should be in his intensity, the impression that he sees through you, not his beef.I'll recommend this even though the production values and story aren't very good. But the character engineering is. And it has an appealing imperiled girl.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.