The Hound of the Baskervilles

Review: This review is based on the Canadian television broadcast.

Cast:

Sherlock Holmes – Richard Roxburgh
Dr. John Watson – Ian Hart
Henry Baskerville – Matt Day
Stapleton – Richard E. Grant
Miss Stapleton - Neve McIntosh
Dr. Mortimer – John Nettles
Mrs. Mortimer – Geraldine James
Barrymore – Ron Cook
Mrs. Barrymore – Liza Tarbuck
Inspector Lestrade – Danny Webb

Crew:

Writer – Allan Cubitt (based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle)
Director – David Attwood
Visual Effects – Framestore/CFC
Executive Producers – Greg Brenman & Rebecca Eaton
Producer – Christopher Hall
Cinematography – James Welland

I confess to having had high hopes for this particular version of The Hound before it aired; large budget, strong cast, state of the art special effects team, good production company…the lot. It had everything going in its favour. The end result, regardless of how much I wanted to like it or how good it looked, did not live up to my expectations. While the film is undoubtedly a lavish 21st century updating of Arthur Conan Doyle's classic tale, and features an impressive, if somewhat miss-used, cast, it fails to deliver on two major points – Holmes and the Hound.

Blonde Australian actor Richard Roxburgh, sporting a vaguely awkward accent as Holmes, does a competent, if not terribly convincing, job with a script that is bereft of any of the quirkiness or deductive genius one hopes to see in a Holmes performance. Instead he is portrayed as a relatively normal, but smug man-of-action type (he roughs up cabby John Clayton to get the info he needs) who resorts to cocaine to stimulate his thought processes rather than to relieve boredom between cases. On one occasion he is shown shooting up in a railway station lavatory, complete with porcelain pull-chain handle dangling next to his head. Like so many actors portraying Holmes before him, we know Roxburgh is Sherlock Holmes not because of his mannerisms or physical appearance, but rather because people call him Mister Holmes and he lives at 221b Baker Street with a fellow called Watson.

Ian Hart gives Watson a strong military bearing, but fails to bring any real warmth to the part. It is also a mostly humorless performance with Hart glowering away at all and sundry for much of the film. There is a strong element of distrust between Holmes and Watson that makes one wonder how and why these two people live together. When Watson comments that Sir Charles may have been tip-toeing before his death, Holmes retorts with “Don’t be an idiot Watson” before wandering into his room, shooting up with coke, and abruptly closing the bedroom door on Watson’s face. While effort is made to strengthen our belief in the relationship later in the film, it just seems too little and too late as the core relationship at the heart of every Holmes story has been sadly lost.

Matt Day as Sir Henry misses the mark and presents something of a crude and vulgar colonial caricature. The Barrymores, Ron Cook and Liza Tarbuck, play their red-herring roles with aplomb, but are given some unexpected, and largely unnecessary, business when Watson finds Barrymore signaling from the window. Of the cast, Richard E. Grant faired the best as Stapleton (here an amateur archeologist). His mostly restrained performance, which later gives way to leering villainy at just the right moment, was quite strong, and in the end has brought me round to the "I'd like to see Grant as Sherlock Holmes" camp. Watching him deliver Mortimer's "I covet your skull" line to the much shorter and blonde Roxburgh seemed patently absurd as the considerably taller Grant is fitted with far more striking features, not to mention frontal development. I seem to recall reading that the producers thought Grant ‘too obvious’ for the part of Holmes, to which I can only say “And that is a bad thing, is it?”

The sometimes CGI and sometimes animatronic hound, which at its worst moments resembles an ill-tempered Scooby Doo from the recent film of the same name, is uneven at best, perhaps proving that state-of-the-art special effects aren't always the best use of a considerable budget. The beast is huge and comes lumbering out of the fog with all the menace one might expect, but it moves in a blocky sort of manner that screams ‘special effect ’ from the go, which unfortunately destroys the atmosphere and tension of the sequence. Someday someone will produce a convincing Hound, be it live animal or special effect, but this one isn’t it.

The plot, while generally faithful in spirit, if not detail, to the original story, does away with many familiar, and expected, scenes and characters. The Sir Hugo flashback, stick deduction sequence, Laura Lyons, and Frankland are all missing in this version, yet Mrs. Mortimer, along with the seance sequence from the 1939 Rathbone Hound are present in this production. The fate of Beryl Stapleton and her brother are also altered here, presumably to create a stronger dramatic climax; whether that intention was achieved or not, you'll have to see for yourself.

The production values are wonderful, the costumes striking and the locations authentic-looking from start to finish. The widescreen format is used to full effect here. Never before has the moor looked as atmospheric or menacing in any film version, and the opening, which alternates between shots of testimony at the inquest into Sir Charles’ death and his post-mortem, is a wonderful sequence that sets the gritty tone for the film. Baker Street, represented by Canning Street in Liverpool, is an extraordinary exterior that looks perfect. There is no doubt about it, this is the best looking version of The Hound ever to be made for television, but unfortunately in this case, looks aren’t everything!

In the end, it is a compelling, if somewhat infuriating, film to watch. Not a great Holmes film, and certainly not the greatest version of this story, but it is fascinating television drama. Certainly this has to be the most ambitious production of The Hound of the Baskervilles to date, however, a Holmes film without a strong Holmes performance just makes the whole exercise seem vaguely pointless and ultimately unsatisfying....at least to this Holmes film fan!

Released to Region 1 DVD on January 21, 2003.

Reviewed by: Charles Prepolec, 2003 [Originally reviewed for www.bakerstreetdozen.com]