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The Baker Street Irregulars - Jack
(Ben Smith), Sadie (Mia Fernandez), Finch (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Jasmine
(Megan Jones), Tealeaf (Alice Hewkin) and Sticks (Dean Gibbons) - are known for doing the dirty work for
Sherlock Holmes (Jonathan Pryce), as they, being street urchins, can go
where neither Holmes or the police could ever go, do what they could never
do, and get information they could never get. But now their leader Jack has gone missing, which worries the others, especially his
sister Sadie, but asking Holmes for help doesn't do very much good, as
he's way too busy investigating another case, where a killer bumps off
police inspectors and leaves jade spoons at the crime scenes. He even asks
the Irregulars to help him in his case, and they only agree after he
promises them to help them find Jack ... but then Holmes himself is
arrested, for the murders of the police men, with envy being cited as his
motive, and all his good relations within the Yard only manage to put him
under strict house arrest. But of course the Irregulars find a way inside
and without any of the guards in front of Baker Street 221B noticing they
help Holmes in his investigations, being his eyes and ears now more than
ever. And soon enough, they find out that Holmes's old nemesis Irene Adler
(Anna Chancellor) is behind the murders - but by that time, Sadie has
already been kidnapped, and Holmes is now sure she and Jack are both
Irene's captives. The Irregulars find out that Irene's in league with a
jeweller and engraver, Mallory (Frank Murray), but when they break into
his apartment they find him dead. Which is enough for Holmes to prove his
innocence, as the next day Mallory is seen alive, which is proof that
Irene, a master of disguise, is actually impersonating him. His death
appears to have been an accident though, as the two of them were plotting
to steal a fortune in gold from the Royal Mint. So while Irene now takes
on Mallory's job, entering the mint as him - after all, an engraver is
likely to gain access to the stored gold -, she threatens Sadie's life to
force Jack to do her role, climb down into the sewers and receive the gold
she hands him down through the sewage system. But of course, Holmes
figures everything out, saves Sadie in time, and sees to it that Irene
Adler walks into a trap ... Bill Paterson plays Watson, but he doesn't
figure prominently in this story. Now the Baker Street
Irregulars hardly ever play a prominent role in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes stories, in which they never serve as anything more than a
plot device, but their mere existence already suggest some interesting
stories to be told should one follow their side of the tale - which this
two-parter doesn't quite do as it splits things between the Irregulars'
and Holmes's perspective, with the latter ultimately coming out on top.
The result then ia actually a very traditional Sherlock Holmes
tale, despite the added characters, one that's nicely constructed though
and holds a few surprises along he line - but also feels a little too
tried and true to really excite. Still, nice genre entertainment if you've
got a little under two hours to kill, just nothing to write home about.
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