After the first clip from Mr. Holmes landed last month, Miramax has now planted a full trailer online. Sir Ian McKellen takes center stage as an older, wiser version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s career-defining character, Sherlock Holmes. Shifting the focus from his early days as a studly detective, in this forthcoming movie, Holmes has become what we all will eventually – old.
At the helm is McKellen’s Gods and Monster director Bill Condon, whose take on Sherlock finds the crime-solving sleuth living a quiet life by the sea. With just his housekeeper and her son for company, he finds himself a little bored. A not entirely unexpected predicament considering he spent the best part of his life up to his neck in investigations. Eager to rekindle the spice of life, Holmes re-opens an old unsolved case, stirring up memories of days gone by.
The elements are all in place for a schmaltzy melodrama, a tag that this trailer manages to avoid. If anything, it stirs up a wave of sadness in light of Holmes’ deteriorating condition. McKellen is largely responsible for what makes the trailer so compelling, even if it’s heartbreaking to witness.
Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from Mitch Cullin’s novel Slight Trick Of The Mind, Mr. Holmes opens in the U.K. on June 19, with a U.S. release expected later this year.
MR. HOLMES is a new twist on the world’s most famous detective.1947, an aging Sherlock Holmes returns from a journey to Japan, where, in search of a rare plant with powerful restorative qualities, he has witnessed the devastation of nuclear warfare. Now, in his remote seaside farmhouse, Holmes faces the end of his days tending to his bees, with only the company of his housekeeper and her young son, Roger. Grappling with the diminishing powers of his mind, Holmes comes to rely upon the boy as he revisits the circumstances of the unsolved case that forced him into retirement, and searches for answers to the mysteries of life and love – before it’s too late.
