Hands of a Murderer (1990)

good back-story, and good acting

As Good As It Gets

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The man that played Sherlock, Edward Woodward was to old and too heavy and did not look the part of the Sherlock Holmes of the past in other movies. He also was very arrogant for a character that was usually has some class. Mycroft his brother was way to old as well.The man that played Dr Watson-John Hillerman was good. It seemed this Sherlock kept getting fooled by Moriarty who escaped being hung with the help of his girlfriend.It was very violent in parts. The crowd at the hangings were cheering and waiting in anticipation for a number of men to be hung. They reminded me more of ISIS terrorist which kill people on camera an celebrate. I don't believe these actors were like that even though they presented them in that way. Christians were also in the crowd and presented kind of stupid. But then again the creator of Sherlock, Arthur Conan Doyle was involved in the occult not religion. I don't know if he wrote this story though.Check out this link. "THE ODD SPIRITUALISM OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE " http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/conan-doyle-spiritualismThe man that plays Moriarty is much younger than Sherlock so it does not seem like he could be Sherlock's enemy for many years. The movie is long and draggy. There are many characters and lots of running in the dark or riding in a horse drawn carriage in the dark. Holmes fight with Moriarty and others was way to long. Anyway I did not like it.

This one-off Sherlock Holmes film for television starts in quite focused, dynamic, and dramatic fashion with a scene of Professor Moriarty escaping his hanging in quite a clever fashion. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't really maintain this standard, and it descends into what is for the most part a laughable, though interesting, muddle.The plot first. On the whole, it doesn't seem to make much sense, and I couldn't tell quite whether the filmmakers were trying to cleave to the Sherlock Holmes canon (they included many rehashed incidents and lines of dialogue from Arthur Conan Doyle) or strike out on their own (this certainly resembles no particular story), but what they do come up with is mainly vague hints of danger and a bit about a disgraced actress with unexplained superpowers of hypnosis. It doesn't really hold the attention nor does it come together cohesively. Edward Woodward notoriously looks nothing like Sherlock Holmes, but I got past that quite quickly. He actually does a very good job with the part. His Holmes is in the Jeremy Brett mold and while he certainly not as good as Brett's masterful performances as the detective, he is very worth watching. His Holmes is appropriately spiky and irascible but with a sense of humor, and he manages to make the exaggerated dialogue written for him to show how loyal he is to his brother Mycroft believable. Mycroft as played by Peter Jeffrey is very much the creature-of-habit civil servant, and important element of the the Mycroft Holmes character that we don't often see. However, after the scene lifted from "The Greek Interpreter" in which the brothers have a deduction contest through the window, we don't get the slightest hint that Mycroft is is supposed to be the intellectual better of the world's greatest detective -- or even of higher than average intelligence. Many scenes of Mycroft being tortured for information pile up and become repetitive as well as exploitive. Moriarty here, and most of the scenes he appears in (as well as that in which mystery-hypnotist-woman puts her lover in a trance) are so overplayed that they become complete unintentionally funny cheese. Anthony Andrews overacts completely as the professor; his only character work seems to consist of "I am utterly evil." The villain is portrayed as sashaying around an office full of Egyptian mummies, while apparently keeping a poisonous snake in a cigar box just so he can kill people by asking them to get a cigar. John Hillerman is largely adequate as Watson, though a little shallow in his constant semi-bewilderment. To top it off, most of the dialogue is quite cliché-ridden and content-free. There's a certain interest to this film as another interpretation of Holmes and an apparent attempt to "darken" the detective for the 1990s, but it mostly comes off as misguided and silly.

Everyone above must have watched a different film to the one I had the misfortune to sit through last night. This is not just the worst Holmes film I've ever seen but one of the worst films I've ever seen. The writing was pitiful. Everything's solved by someone drawing a gun! Turgid, simplistic and riddled with holes. For instance, why does Moriarty sit there gurning while Holmes spends 14 years grinding down his chains, or jump out of the carriage, as Holmes does? I thought the bloke was supposed to be a criminal mastermind? Oh, I could go on forever, but I'll never get back those minutes I lost watching that rubbish, and I don't want to do the same to you, whiffling on here. One final word: Avoid. Like the plague. (Sorry, that was three more.)

Good production with lots of good props and settings which looked like the 19th century, except for a couple of phony looking moustaches. In this story the evil James Moriarty endangers Holmes brother, who works for the British government, by trying to gain access to some classified documents so he could use them for his own profit. A good treatment by all the performers, especially the character Moriarty's actor. For the Professor to be so brilliant, he did a very stupid thing at the movie's end which I thought was a little out of character. 3 stars.