They did sterling work together on **Gods And Monsters **and now Mr Holmes – no full stops here – reunites Bill Condon and Ian McKellen for a gentle crime-busting yarn set in Sherlock Holmes’ autumnal years. This film has a new trailer, freshly in via the morning postal carriage, that can be perusified below.
Note it’s the crime-busting that’s become gentle, not the crime itself. This isn’t Holmes on the trail of a Victorian pic ’n’ mix racket or figuring out whose football has just sailed through his conservatory window. Instead, the seasoned sleuth is back on the case of the unsolved mystery that led directly to his retirement. The case, now three decades old, is colder than an Inuit’s icebox but, undeterred, Holmes dusts off his sleuthing instincts and sets to work.
Like Gods And Monsters, which charted a fictionalised version of horror maven James Whale’s last days, a once nimble-minded man’s sense of mortality is under the spotlight here. The setting is 1947 and McKellen’s Holmes is even more curmudgeonly than we’re used to. There’s only his housekeeper Mrs. Munro and her young offspring, Roger, to help him pass the time.
Would a demonic hound or two be too much to ask? Find out when** Mr Holmes** heads into our cinemas on June 19 with Laura Linney, Roger Allam and The Wolverine's Hiroyuki Sanada in tow.