Blogorium Review: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

I don't know what to make of the 1976 Sherlock Holmes adventure The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, although I think that many detractors of the 2009 reboot starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law might want to rethink the "it's awful because Guy Ritchie made Holmes an action star," at least once they've seen this curious mishmash of detective fiction, wry but inconsistent humor, nonsensical action, and odd pacing.

The story, which is non-canonical (meaning that it's not one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales), was adapted for the screen by the author's novel, Nicholas Meyer* and directed by Herbert Ross, deals with Sherlock Holmes' increasing addiction to cocaine (hinted at in the Doyle stories but made explicit in Meyer's novel; the title refers to Holmes' preferred mixture - seven-per-cent cocaine, ninety-three-per-cent water). In a fit of paranoia, Holmes (Nicol Williamson) locks himself in his study and informs Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) that the nefarious Professor Moriarty (Laurence Olivier) is plotting to kill him. The befuddled Moriarty appeals to Watson, confused to why he is the source of threatening letters and being stalked by Holmes. Watson and Mycroft Holmes (Charles Gray) conspire to trick the detective into visiting Vienna, home of famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). During treatment, Holmes, Watson, and Freud become embroiled in a kidnapping scheme involving Lola Deveraux (Vanessa Redgrave), a former patient of Freud and mistress of Baron von Leinsdorf (Jeremy Kemp).

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is meant to be a comedy - at least, IMDB indicates that alongside "adventure" and "crime" - although you wouldn't really know it for long stretches of the film. While it does open promising that "the story is true - only the facts have been made up," the film teeters between wry and serious. I can understand chuckling at the voice-over from Watson; it relays, in a clever fashion, where this adventure fits in with other Holmes adventures**. The voice-over, which I would suspect Meyer lifted directly from his novel, disappears shortly after Holmes and Watson arrive in Vienna, and the humorous elements could easily be taken as serious, compounded by a shift in tone near the end of the film (more on this below). Whether we're supposed to find Lowenstein (Joel Grey)'s horror at a dead nun funny or not is up to you.

After seeing the film in totality, I was surprised how much Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes borrows from The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, particularly the beginning and ending. The erratic, unpredictable-but-nevertheless-brilliant Holmes bounces around London, confounding Watson, hiding in the bushes, disguised, and generally making life difficult for his compatriots. In this film, the blame lies centrally in his cocaine abuse, but the "manic" Holmes of Ritchie's film is manifest in Nicol Williamson's performance. The stoic, slightly annoyed Watson is less apparently embodied in Robert Duvall, but I must admit I was slightly distracted by his accent, which shifted between bad and laughable (the voice-overs are the worst)***.

Late in the film, after Sigmund Freud's role becomes as perfunctory as Jack the Ripper's in Murder By Decree, the trail of clues gives way to the sort of action 2009's Sherlock Holmes is criticized for: there's a car train chase, a gun fight that becomes a sword fight which inexplicably moves from inside a train car to on top of the train, Sigmund Freud providing the inspiration for Liam Neeson in Taken (I only wish I was kidding), and a moment which I must assume was meant to be clever but is instead painfully stupid (it involves axes and a superfluous train car).

This sequence is followed, unfortunately, by a radical shift in tone, brought about by a need to justify Sigmund Freud's presence in the film (his "treatment" earlier in the narrative merely consists of hypnotizing Holmes while the detective detoxes), and a final hypnosis session ham-handedly tries to explain away Holmes' mistrust of women, his addiction, his choice of profession, and his suspicion of Professor Moriarty. To say much more would spoil the end of the film, but it culminates in an abrupt and brutal flashback that robs the film of its lighthearted tone. Then again, the film also attempts to shoehorn in an eleventh-hour romance angle for no reason.

Unfortunately, despite being well-acted (if not well-accented), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is too disjointed to be effective as a film. Like its 2009 descendant, the film is all over the map tonally: partly comic, somewhat sleuth-centric, sporadically dark, and unnecessarily action-heavy with a dash of religious overtones. Guy Ritchie's take on Holmes at least balances the disparate elements and settles to entertain, but if you're looking for a funny non-canonical Sherlock Holmes film, might I direct you towards Without a Clue, which is funnier and has a better mystery. Like Murder By Decree, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is a curio, a diversion, the sort of "Sherlock Holmes meets ___" mashup which is periodically in vogue, but not much more.


* Many of you know Meyers better for his involvement in Star Trek's II, IV, and VI or, as most people like to call them, "the good ones."
** At the outset, the film identifies itself as what "really" happened when Holmes "died" in The Final Problem: Watson apparently fabricated Holmes' death while the detective snuck away to combat his addiction.
*** For the record, Alan Arkin's accent is less laughable, although not particularly good.