a twisty murder mystery that’s worth solving

The sport is afoot, once more, as Sherlock’s youthful, smarter, pluckier little sister heads out on her first correct case. Millie Bobby Brown leads one other likeable crime caper that seems like a stable second chapter for the YA sequence – even whether it is barely muddied by boy issues.

With the adventures of 2020’s origin story behind her, Enola (Bobby Brown) is now arrange as a correct non-public detective in her personal proper. But who’s really going to rent a teenage woman to resolve crimes in Victorian London? Another teenage woman, after all – placing her on the path of a lacking manufacturing facility employee that finally ends up exposing a sticky internet of lies, homicide and corruption that goes proper to the highest.

Where the primary movie was set in opposition to a backdrop of girls’s suffarage, Enola’s first case offers us a potted historical past of the 1888 matchgirls’ strike – mixing the horrors of Typhoid, phosphorus poisoning and little one labour legal guidelines with the movie’s peppy, polished tweenage tone. It’s all massively well-intentioned although, and author Jack Thorne does a good job of balancing the scales.

Most of the credit score nonetheless belongs to Bobby Brown, at all times preserving the viewers on her facet by means of one other loveable (if barely cartoony) slice of book-smart heroism. No longer a misplaced runaway looking for her personal place in massive brother’s story, Enola is in full grown-up detective mode right here – seen beating up coppers on the rooftops of Whitechapel, then fishing a drunk Sherlock (Henry Cavill) out of a gutter.

But with age comes different distractions. Where Enola’s debut journey gave the marginally moist Viscount Tewksbury (Louis Partridge) a welcome backseat, right here he returns as a dishy liberal MP who Enola can’t maintain her eyes off. “Is he looking back?” she asks the digicam as he walks away, Fleabag type, nearly biting her lip. The romcom by no means will get too tangled in the principle plot nevertheless it’s a disgrace to see Enola Holmes caving to conference fairly so shortly (you by no means see Sherlock stopping one in all his circumstances so he can flirt with a paper fan…)

For essentially the most half although, Enola is now each bit the equal of her genius brother and her firebrand mum (Helena Bonham Carter). Supernaturally gifted at recognizing clues and fixing puzzles, she unpicks the threads of her first case with out even making an attempt, solely pressured into a number of cracking fights and chases by the dastardly Superintendent Grail (David Thewlis, proving once more that there’s no movie too clear he can’t scuzz up).

Fizzing alongside properly, even because it suggestions the two-hour mark, Enola Holmes 2 matches the mould it broke two years in the past with a twisty homicide thriller that’s properly price fixing. A pleasant finish credit score sting units the story up for an even bigger half three, and a mid-point reveal suggests Enola’s new circumstances would possibly begin tangling along with her brother’s, nevertheless it’ll be a disgrace if the actual hero finds herself stepping out of the highlight. Two movies in, Enola is way extra attention-grabbing than most on-screen Sherlocks have been in years.