14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Dramatic and Suspenseful Film, September 8, 2005
For years this was the only Sherlock Holmes mystery in the Jeremy Brett collection that I had never seen. I put off buying it because of the many mediocre reviews I had read. This month I decided to purchase it and finish off my collection. In brief, I was pleasantly surprised. I found it to be a very suspenseful and interesting film. Holmes must bring down a "professional" blackmailer (Charles Milverton), who has destroyed many lives through his tactics. There is much debate over whether Holmes falls in love in the episode. I don't think so. In order to infiltrate the Milverton household, he disguises himself as a plumber and, in the process, draws the romantic attraction of the house maid. They have a couple of "romantic moments" together, and even kiss at one point. However, although the maid is attracted to him, I don't think Holmes was truly attracted to her. It was merely an act as part of his undercover operation. Needless to say, he breaks the girl's heart. At the end, he even says there are aspects of the case that he was not proud of. This was no doubt one of them.
But I would definitely recommend this film. It is more dramatic and suspenseful than other Sherlock Holmes episodes, and the acting is fantastic. And even though it is close to 2 hours in length, it will keep your attention throughout.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good one, not liked for some reason, March 15, 2002
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Sherlock Holmes - The Master Blackmailer [VHS] (VHS Tape)
There is nothing wrong with this one. It is much better than lots of them. For some reason lots of peple don't like it. Jeremy Brett is perfect in this one. Even of his illness he was perfect for therole. He acted fine even though he was ill. The actor who played Watson is even good! This film is good. There is nothing wrong with it!
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Holmes the human -- almost., March 9, 2007
THE MASTER BLACKMAILER is arguably the best of the five feature-length Sherlock Holmes films made by Grenada TV. It lacks the convolutions of THE LAST VAMPYRE, the occasional sluggishness of the THE SIGN OF FOUR, the weird mystical elements of the THE ELIGIBLE BACHELOR, and the overly experimental cinemetography that undermined the otherwise excellent HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. The story shoves Holmes out of his comfort zone of cold deductive reasoning and poses with brutal frankness the old Nietzscheian question: 'How many lines can the hero cross before he becomes a villain himself?'
BLACKMAILER pits Jeremy Brett's Holmes Edward Hardwicke's Watson against
Charles Augustus Milverton, their most formiddable opponent since Professor Moriarity. As the name suggests, Milverton, played with sniggering, loathsome villainy by Robert Hardy, makes his living obtaining compromising information about London's elite and threatening to ruin them unless paid fortunes in hush money. His long history of blackmail has left a wreckage-trail of scandal and suicide all over Victorian England, but his precautions are so thorough, and his intelligence so keen, that his victims have no choiue but to pay up or endure the consequences.
When Lady Eva Brackenwell becomes Milverton's next target, however, she employs Holmes to recover old love letters which, if made public, will foil her upcoming marriage to a young lord. And herein lies the story's main departure from formula: instead of a conventional mystery for the consulting detective, we have a problem better suited to a noirish private investigator. How can Holmes prevent a master blackmailer from spilling his illicit goods with the wedding only a few days away?
The late and extremely great Jeremy Brett always played Holmes as being either a bit less or a bit more than human depending on his mood and the case at hand -- he was often ill-tempered, arrogant, bad-mannered, and insensitive to the point of cruelty, and even in his best moments he seemed to be approximating human feelings rather than actually experiencing them; yet he was also courageous, brilliant, dogged, loyal, and imbued with a fierce sense of justice and a terrifying resolve to see the mystery solved and the evildoer punished. It is this last category that the writers chose to explore in BLACKMAILER, in which an increasingly desperate and frustrated Holmes finds himself posing as a plumber and seducing (in chaste Victorian fashion) Milverton's naive housekeeper, Agatha, so as to gain access to Milverton's home. To what extent Holmes feels anything for Agatha, if at all, is unclear, but Brett's subtle acting shows that while Holmes may not be capable of experiencing affection, he is certainly capable of feeling shame -- shame encouraged by a disgusted Watson, whose gentlemanly sense of honor is revolted at this ultraMachiavellian move.
Hardy's Milverton, far from being a foil for Holmes' genius, proves to be a full match for our hero, who grows to hate his antagonist and finally throws aside the subtleties of espionage for brute force and thievery. The story's resolution, one of the most violent in the history of the series, is simultaneously satisfying and humbling -- in the end, Holmes and Watson serve as little more than accessories after the fact to the world's most unlikely vigilante. The only real down note in the whole production was the decision by the director to edit Inspector Lestrade's role in the story to a glorified cameo -- a potentially classic scene where he is talking to Holmes and Watson about a crime without realizing he is talking to its perpetrators unfortunately did not make the final cut.
THE MASTER BLACKMAILER stands as one of the more disturbing and poignent of all the Grenada TV Holmes outings. Normally it is Holmes who gives the lecture and those around him who are the pupils. Here, it is the detective who learns one of the hardest of life's lessons -- that the means used to defeat evil are often as bad as the evil itself.
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