"The puzzle is always as devious as the setter."
Hello everyone!
I can't quite believe it lol, but apparently that's what you get when you actually pay attention to what's going on and everything that might be happening online.
I've been a fan of the great detective Sherlock Holmes since ... forever sounds like such a long time ago but, well, it HAS been forever.
I used to read the children-friendly, abridged works of his, then watched the show with Jeremy Brett playing the titular character. When Netflix started poking around the Holmes family, of course I was going to watch this, too.
And for the most part, I've been enjoying the romp!
So without further ado, let's jump straight into what's going to be happening tonight, which is a review of the third installment in the series: Enola Holmes 3.
Allons-y.
Enola, if you recall, is the youngest Holmes child, and after becoming Sherlock's ward and disappearing into London, she's happily been living there with her beau Tewkesbury, solving mysterious cases and generally enjoying life.
Then Tewkesbury proposes, because of course the boy was going to propose. Only Enola would be so blind to this fact, lol.
And everything seems to go to hell in a hand basket.
Firstly, the wedding is taking place in Malta, for which a contrived reason is found (Tewkie's dad served there, met his mom there, and they married there) so that our heroes can enjoy the sun and sea, secondly, Enola has exactly three family members who'll be attending, and thirdly, she has no idea if she even wants to be a lady.
She's trying to do her best to play nice, and Sherlock, who's supposedly giving her away, is being obnoxious.
Then on the day of the actual wedding, Watson derails Enola's attempts to get to church when he catches up to tell her Sherlock's missing and possibly kidnapped.
This of course means she's going to investigate, misses her wedding, hurts Tewkie boy (who honestly needs to man up a little), and has people dropping left, right and center the hotter the trail goes, though at the moment she only has two words: Wrath and Khost, one of which she has no clue about, but the other is a city in Afghanistan.
Things might have gone even worse with her and Tewkie if the hotel where they were staying didn't catch fire and his mom turned out missing, because of course someone kidnapped her too; the young lovers decide working together might be better than nothing, and they're on a time crunch now.
Having found some medals she believes might be important, Enola teams up with a Maltese revolutionary, Mikiel, who has only two lines in the entire movie, and they're about the revolution and his hate for the British Empire, so he's not exactly all that interesting if we're being honest, but he adds some flavour to the whole scene so he's allowed to stay.
At this point, with the second person she was following dropping dead, Enola confronts none other than Moriarty, who's set this all up, but the WHY of it is still at large.
Holmes is all tied up, so is Tewkie's mother, so it's up to Enola to save the day with what she has to go on. She knows Moriarty is in Malta under the name Adeline Rathe, and she knows the medals have to be important.
Turns out they point to Tewkie's late father's BFF, who they know fought with daddy-o during the Anglo-Afghan war, which, with the help of Eudoria (the Holmes mother, delightful as always) and Miki, they find means a massive cover-up.
It always boils down to money. And wars usually gobble up a LOT of money.
So Tewkie's old man decided to steal from the Aghans to finance that war, then had a morality attack by the time they got to Malta and sunk the boat off-shore.
Now, as to WHY this has all been happening: Moriarty wants that gold and has orchestrated everything, because the only one who knew the location of the gold was the dad; the only way to get to the dad was through Tewkie; the only way to Enola was also through Tewkie, because she was the only one who could connect the dots, pushed to it by the threat to Sherlock's life.
Enola needed to unveil the mystery, and only with Tewkie's help could she get all the pieces together, deducing the gold is in the cave Tewkie mentioned at the start of the movie, and tricking Moriarty into believing she has the upper hand, when in reality Miki's on the lookout with his fellow rebels.
A fight ensues during which Enola kicks Moriart'y ass, and Moriarty kicks her ass, but Sherlock and Tewkie's mother are freed, and Enola spends a lot of time convincing her brother NOT to shoot Moriarty on sight, since they're better than that.
Instead, she goes back into prison, the gold they recovered will be returned to Afghanistan, Malta may see freedom sooner rather than later, and Watson is overjoyed to have his Sherlock back (him describing how he won Sherlock over is a lot like how you'd win over a feral cat, if you ask me).
Enola has her marriage, simple and loving and small, and she and Tewkie travel for their honeymoon, writing from here, there and everywhere.
And while fireworks explode up above where they're swimming in Malta, down below the shot pans to reveal the sunken ship from all those years ago - titled, in what I'm sure may have future implications, Wrath of Adeline.
Fin!
A fairly easy mystery because these tend to be just so, Enola Holmes 3 is nonetheless an amusing watch and focuses primarily on relationships and what expectations different people bring to different situations, like marriage. It also showcases how you should deal with them, and how family can be both blood and found.
The cast remains a delight, but I will say that Millie's makeup was much too heavy this time around, it distracted from a lot of the scenes.
Overall, an easy hour and half romp through Malta and some devious mystery going!
xx
*images and video not mine
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