3/5 stars
Breaking the law and maintaining the moral high ground are the themes at the heart of The Great Detective Sherlock Holmes – The Greatest Jail Breaker, a deceptively simple animated feature that will keep children engaged while offering food for thought for the grown-ups accompanying them.
The film is adapted by directors Toe Yuen Kin-to and Matthew Chow Wing-siu from two episodes of the illustrated children’s novel series of the same name by author Lai Ho, who is credited as the script editor. Billed as a “100 per cent Hong Kong-made” production, it vividly reimagines Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuthing adventures in a world populated by anthropomorphic animals.
The Greatest Jail Breaker opens with a prologue in which Sherlock Holmes (voiced by Ken Wong) puts his incompetent Scotland Yard peers – led by Gorilla (Louis Yuen Siu-cheung) – in their place by quickly solving the murder of a tycoon turned moneylender. It offers the first glimpse of 19th-century London, where a yawning wealth gap causes much suffering.
The story proper begins when Sherlock and his sidekick, Dr Watson (Monte Cho), go after a master thief known as White Storm, who is beloved by the population for robbing the rich and giving to the poor. When Sherlock identifies the chivalrous criminal as Mack (Stephen Au Kam-tong) and helps police arrest him in front of his orphaned daughter, the public turn on the detective.
Four years go by and Sherlock is still struggling to reconcile with his conscience when Mack breaks out of prison in an amazing stunt – only to be tailed by Scarface (Jerry Ku), a notorious crime lord who also escapes from custody to seek revenge on Mack.
The film culminates in an action-packed third act in which Sherlock and co must track down the fugitives and right the wrong.
In a film industry where home-grown animated features and detective mysteries are both in short supply, this film is refreshing family entertainment. It should be an easy sell overseas – bar a few lines of dialogue that subtly echo Hong Kong’s zeitgeist (including a quip about the controversial criminal charge of having dishonest access to a computer), it lacks any scenes only locals would understand.
While it is unlikely to replicate the success of Yuen’s greatest hits, My Life as McDull (2001) and McDull, Prince de la Bun (2004), The Greatest Jail Breaker will please fans of Hong Kong animated film who are yearning for a comeback. When the city’s animators put their hearts – and their money – into their work, they are more than capable of producing genuine quality.
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