The Hound of the Baskervilles (2002)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 6.6 by 2242. cinematizens.
Genre: Holmes.
Verdict: The moor!
The elder Baskerville dies out on the moor in peculiar circumstances, and his young heir arrives from Canada to assume the title. But Dr Mortimer has seen that footprint and goes to Sherlock Holmes for advice. This is a perfectly cast Holmes, though his attention to personal grooming is not Holmesian, but he crackles with intelligence and dominates proceedings even while off-camera.
The cast of characters is assembled in the rambling and slightly ramshackle mansion near the moor. The hound puts in a stunning, early appearance that stayed with me after I first saw this twenty years ago. The staging is great but the inserted dialogue is pathetic in compassion. Likewise the outdoor scenes on the moor are splendid but the accompanying dialogue is not, and too little of it comes from the original.
The villain is obvious, since he is the only one we get to know, the others are ciphers and might as well be CGI. Even the subplot with the butler and his wife is bleached into near nothingness. But the villain, played by Richard Grant, is magnificent. He switches on and off from maniacal to charming, from genial to menacing, from sincere to evil in a twinkle. Superb.
The Jeremy Brett version was absolutely literal to Conan Doyle’s text and the poorer for it. It did not make use of the sight and sound to do what ink on the page could not do to generate an atmosphere. Ergo literary fidelity is not an end in itself, but in this 2002 version so many liberties are taken with the text that the air is let out of the plot.
Watson is made a credible figure in the dialogue, though the actor in the role is far from convincing. He seems like a little boy trying to act like a big boy, even his hat seems too big for him. Underneath Dr Mortimer’s beard, side burns, straggling hair, and moustache is Inspector Barnaby who would have made a far better Watson.
A casual search on the IMDb returns a dozen of more versions of the HotB, and there are others with altered titles. I have seen Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Christoper Lee, Jeremy Brett, and Ian Richardson each in turn battle that dog, as well as Benedict Cumberatch, and now (again) Richard Roxborough.