the leading man is my tpye

Overrated and overhyped

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Story by Philip PullmanIt starts off with a white woman marrying a black minister. Maybe I am wrong but I did not believe interracial marriages happened way way back then and all seemed to be kind of on the rich side and all getting along. It seemed phonyBillie Piper is very good in this, she is Sally Lockhart. She is trying to get finances back to a customer she has that lost money through a certain company. Her character works hard to get information to help her clients and is not stopped by threats or physical harm which she receives many times during this movieThere a number of people that seem to live in the same house as her all having different jobs. An old photographer, a detective, and a young photographer named Jim live in the same house has Sally and exchange information. Mr Bellman has an invention that he is pouring his money in to. I don't quite understand what it was it is important to this movie.There are many characters in this story, a spiritualist, a magician and even a beautiful big dog that is Sally's.At times it is very confusing who is who. There is one character named Isabelle that is in love with the magician. Her name is Lyndsey Marshal who is excellent in Garrows' Law.It a good movie with good actors but to me much of the content is unbelievable.

It is sad when an excellent cast is wasted in something quite as preposterous as this.Imagine a late Victorian London where a near teenage young lady styles herself a 'Financial Consultant', and sinks a retired school teacher's entire retirement savings in a shipping line that goes bankrupt after its ship -- apparently the only one -- mysteriously disappears at sea on a calm day.The plucky financial consultant resolves to retrieve the retirement funds, and begins investigating in a culturally thoroughly modern, multicultural London, as if maybe the screen writer and casting director had failed to notice the Victorian settings and worked a modern script, while everybody else did their best to recreate Victorian London without paying attention to the incongruities and anachronisms of the script.Throw in mediums, psychic visions, mysterious foreigners, dastardly businessmen, surprisingly unintimidating goons, secret weddings, and love affairs that are so complicated that even the cast seems quite unable to work out who is involved with whom until the very end.Fans of Philip Pullman's 'Sally Lockhart' books may not mind any of it, but this movie will leave the uninitiated puzzled as to their success.

This is not at all what I expect from "Mystery!" Unless intended as farce, in which case it did not succeed either, I found the production far-fetched, and fraught with 21st century sensibilities and laxity.Why did Sally only wear a hat to visit the villain? Was it 1875 when she was investigating, but 1970 or later in the rest of the story? I would have expected her to cover her head whenever she went out, with the exception of emergency.And though very funny (*Was* it an attempt at farce?), during the scene at the Patent Office, I wasn't sure whether the Anglo-Asian clerk was befuddled by Sally because she was a woman or ineptly flirting with her.To quote Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." This production eliminated none of the impossible, and so we are left wallowing in disbelief at what we are expected to accept as the "truth" of the story.Not being a reader of Pullman, I cannot comment on how true it is to the book on which it was based. Perhaps Mr. Pullman deserves the blame for my incredulity?

In the second in Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart trilogy, his heroine Sally Lockhart, parentless and alone, has found a ramshackle, surrogate family in Fred Garland's photographer-cum-private investigator, his uncle, and cheeky cockney Jim Taylor. Protected by her enormous hound, Chaka, she is now a financial consultant, using the patchy education her father had given her to advantage and staunchly defending her independence in Victorian London. The story kicks off with two events: one of Sally's clients explains that she has been ruined by the failure of a business she invested in on Sally's advice. At the same time a magician named McKinnon seeks Fred's help as he believes he has witnessed a murder. These circumstances combine to make a thread that leads straight to a dangerous businessman and sinister work in a factory in the north, and great danger for all of Sally's friends. I'd really enjoyed "The Ruby in the Smoke", the first of the adaptations of the brave and modern Sally Lockhart trilogy, when it aired on British TV last Christmas. I was very excited to hear a sequel was planned; thought the chemistry between the radiant Billie Piper's Sally and J J Field's pleasing Fred Garland had worked well, and the stories are strong base material, even if squished into a TV slot.But...maybe it was watching this with my parents when it aired over New Year on British TV - but I found this strangely detached, even a bit mechanical. This time round the leads' chemistry seemed to be absent, the script dry, the story rushed (as was the previous one) - the relations between the characters insufficiently explained. Considering we'd had to wait a year for this one, I was a bit disappointed. Perhaps the aim was to make a classroom-suitable programme for Victorian History lessons? - if so, why air it post watershed?I wouldn't mind watching it again to find out whether it was just a false first impression. Sally is the Victorian heroine girls need today; incidentally, I disagree with other reviewers' annoyance with her modern look - it's exactly this quality that makes her a perfect poster girl to draw younger viewers into historical fiction. Ditto the thoroughly enlightened casting policy, reflecting actual, modern British society in a way you'll hardly ever see in historical TV shows. I've got a lot of time for both leads; and the baddie, Bellmann, was quietly menacing. It also looked amazing, packed with great period details. If they make it to the third in the trilogy I'd be very surprised, but would hope that they can find a way to better draw out the drama and excitement. Meanwhile, the excellent original books are a must if you enjoyed this even a bit.