A murder mystery set in Victorian London with an old detective chasing an elusive serial killer. Sound familiar? Well, it is a little Sherlock Holmes-y, but it’s a lot less energetic and a bit darker. But is it good? Well, that’s a mystery you will have to read on to solve!
There’s murder on the streets of Limehouse, London. Some pretty brutal and disgusting murders actually. Detective inspector Kildare is brought in to take over as head of the investigation. He knows he’s there as a scapegoat should the investigation fail, but finding the so called ‘Golem’ committing the crimes and also saving a young girl from being hanged. There’s a few different threads going on here. There’s Kildare’s investigation into the murders, and then that links with chatting to Elizabeth Cree, who faces the rope, suspected of poisoning her husband. They intertwine nicely and there’s some good storytelling that helps the mystery play out in a fairly satisfactory way.
The great Bill Nighy plays Inspector Kildare, the older, slightly sassy and far too caring detective assigned to investigate the golem. Bill Nighy is a fantastic actor, and here he’s pretty good, but he isn’t great. I don’t think it’s his fault, I think it’s the writing. It isn’t bad as such, but at times it just feels a little clunky and not good. So sometimes he does seem a little wooden or weird, but it’s just the lines he’s reading. The same can be said for Olivia Cooke as Liz Cree. She’s got a bit of a strange character so anything a bit unnatural can be attributed to that, but she handles it all very well. She’s a very capable actress, but again some of the writing is a bit off. Same with Douglas Booth, who plays an extremely over the top actor who has connections to both Cree and the investigation. In short, everyone is pretty good, but I think the writing lets them down occasionally.
But when you’ve got a mystery film, the main question is whether the mystery is any good. And in this case, I think it is. It plays out very well, with the investigation taking logical steps and the killers murders being replayed with each suspect as the killer. But just when it comes to a good conclusion, another twist is thrown in and that doesn’t sit quite as well with me. I was perfectly happy, but the story decided to go one step more and it just felt a little, off. That and some of the clunky writing stopped this from being a really great movie. Not that it is bad, but not as great as it should be.
The story does flow pretty well. There’s not as much emphasis on some aspects of it as it seems to make out there will be, but the main mystery is pretty good. Kildare is a smart man and that means it’s a pretty good mystery. The murders are gruesome, the motives questionable and the suspects are laid out fairly soon and then eliminated one by one. Classic murder mystery stuff. It’s the added fluff of Liz Cree’s background that doesn’t mesh quite as well, playing out like some sort of romance drama with some ties to the murder mystery. It just doesn’t seem to click together fully. I was hoping for an all out murder mystery crime solving adventure but that isn’t what this is.
What this is is a pretty decent movie about a serial killer investigation with some drama about the life of a young woman mixed in. It mostly works, some doesn’t. The story is pretty good, but the dialogue falters at times. The acting is as good as can be and the story itself is satisfying enough. But it’s never great. Sherlock Holmes this is not, but as it’s own thing, not too shabby.
JACK’S SCORE: 3/5
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