Pursuit to Algiers

1945
6.7| 1h5m| NR| en
Details

After the King of Ruthenia has been assassinated, Holmes and Watson are engaged to escort his son to Europe via Algiers, aboard a transatlantic ocean liner which also carries a number of suspicious persons, any of whom may be involved in a plot to also assassinate him.

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Reviews

ThiefHott Too much of everything
mraculeated The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
MartinHafer I love Sherlock Holmes....at least the way it was originally written by Arthur Conan Doyle. In these wonderful stories, Watson was Holmes' friend and, at times, important assistant. He was no bumbler but was brave and passionate. Unfortunately, in many films, especially the Basil Rathbone ones, Watson is essentially an idiot....one of the big problems I have with any of the Fox/Universal Holmes films. Yet, despite Watson once again being amazingly dense in "Pursuit to Algiers", it is an enjoyable B-movie.When the story begins, some clues are thrown at Holmes in order to get him to an important meeting. Once there, he learns that there's been an assassination and a country's new king needs to be brought out of hiding and brought to his native land. But some dark forces are at work and they plan on killing the young man the first chance they get. Who the dark forces are, exactly, is never mentioned--but WWII just ended, so it cannot be Nazis and the West's love of the USSR hadn't yet soured significantly....so I had no idea who the assassins were working for...but they did, naturally, show and Homes is there to stop them on an ocean liner...or die trying.Compared to other B-mystery films of the era, this one is a big better than usual. Sure, it has idiot Watson and there were some plot elements that didn't make perfect sense (why take an ocean liner....why not send him back home on a US or British warship, for example). But it is entertaining and Rathbone is quite good as Holmes.
dglink Stolen emeralds, an endangered prince, a fog-bound steamship, a plane crash, a revolver hidden in a purse. Through a clever series of encounters, which Sherlock Holmes deciphers with his usual sharp intellect, Holmes and his dear friend, Doctor Watson, are directed to a specific address at a specific time in a foggy London back alley; there, Holmes is engaged by a group of foreign gentlemen to escort an important personage from England back to his home country. While Holmes and Watson do not battle spies in "Pursuit to Algiers," the sleuths do return to matters of foreign intrigue. Leonard Lee wrote the first of two Holmes screenplays for this, the tenth in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series. Lee's screenplay is light on suspense, and, despite the assured direction of veteran Holmes' director Roy William Neill, the film can only be rated better than average among the Rathbone-Bruce movies.Despite some sinister fog-shrouded scenes in London's back streets, cinematographer Paul Ivano shoots most of the film aboard the S.S. Friesland, a steamer bound for Algiers. While interior shots are crisp black-and-white images, the deck scenes are murky and layered with obviously fake fog. Although the producer-director and the two above-the-title stars are back, not only the writer and cinematographer, but most of the supporting cast are fresh faces in the series. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are in good form, and Watson is given a bit more to do than usual, including a song entitled "The Bonnie Banks o'Loch Lomond" that spotlights Nigel Bruce's own fine voice; the retelling over dinner of a Holmes adventure, "The Giant Rat of Sumatra;" and a few solo errands of responsibility at Holmes's direction. None of the supporting players stand out, although lovely Marjorie Riordon as a young singer from Brooklyn has a nice voice, and the cold sexually ambiguous Martin Kosleck is appropriately sinister as the knife thrower.Perhaps after ten episodes the Universal Holmes series had become routine and perfunctory to the participants. The proceedings play out almost entirely aboard a ship, and the plot lacks a single diabolical villain of the caliber of Professor Moriarty or Adrea Spedding, the Spider Woman. However, most Holmes fans should be pleased, and even the sharpest viewers may not guess Holmes's final revelation. While not the best of the series, "Pursuit to Algiers" is good fun and definitely entertaining.
TheLittleSongbird Of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series(just two left to see), Pursuit to Algiers was the one that came off least. It is not awful, none of the films in the series are really, but it felt rather underwhelming, especially when Hound of the Baskervilles, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Scarlet Claw, The Spider Woman and Pearl of Death were as good as they were. Basil Rathbone as always is without complaint in the title role, and Nigel Bruce quite possibly gives his best performance of the series. Marjorie Riordan beguiles too. The music is lively with some really lovely sounding songs, Watson's rendition of Loch Lomand/Flow Gently Sweet Afton was one of the film's highlights. Holmes' ingenious duping and outsmarting is a joy to watch too(the closest Pursuit to Algiers comes to actually feeling like Sherlock Holmes and a mystery in general), the ending is good and well-rounded off for such a short film(65 minutes), Holmes' ending line putting down Watson is just priceless and at least there is no out-of-place patriotic speech. Pursuit to Algiers does have a number of problems though. The film does have a nice atmosphere and doesn't look too bad, but there is a sense that the production was hurried. Apart from that cracking ending line and some other moments, the script is as thin as a wafer and the story falls into the contrived and silly category with not enough suspense or mystery to make it really interesting. There is nowhere near enough Holmes either, while Bruce does carry the film very well you do wish that Rathbone was there more to make it feel like a Holmes mystery, because it didn't feel like that a lot of the time. The villains are reasonably well characterised but not menacing enough and don't really have that much to do, and Leslie Vincent is rather weak and uncharismatic in his role. In conclusion, far from a must avoid but disappointing, personally it was the weakest of the series and really does not see Holmes at his best. 5/10 Bethany Cox
lagudafuad Pursuit to Algiers is the 12th Basil Rathbone and Bruce Nigel Sherlock film, and it's based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's characters. The movie is noted to have taken some characters and elements from Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Red Circle.The movie's plot is quite ingenious, as it takes you unawares in the way things just turn up, with Sherlock proving to be a mastermind genius from the way he disguised the King, to the way he got himself on the boat, after sending Dr. Watson ahead.Majority of the movie is shot in a boat setting, and the movie even ends on the boat, which gave way for us to see some nice cinematography and the plot shows a little of what many people think Sherlock is, a guy who is too smart for we the rest of the world. Before this was The Woman in Green (1945) and that was also directed by Roy William Neill, who actually did a better job here than he did in The Woman in Green. The screenplay was done by Leonard Lee, who did a good job making sure each time you spent watching this movie, anticipation is created as you are curious to see how Holmes is going to pull it off, and the final twist in the movie was just the icing on the cake of this masterpiece.The movie's plot starts with our duo planning a vacation to take a load off the unending cases that they seem to be swamped in, when some series of fortunate events start to happen on their way home, Sherlock was able to deduce from the series of events that he was been called for a meeting.After he had solved the events to deduce the address (which was basic elementary if I could say so myself) and time of the meeting, he attended it and he is giving a task which he took. The task was given to him by the prime minister of the fictional country of Rovinia, who begs Holmes to escort Prince Nikolas back to his country Rovinia. It turns out that his father has been assassinated, and Nikolas is the next in line to be king, but since he left the country at birth to be raised in England no one but the prime minister and a few knows what he looks like, and the assassinators of the father will stop at nothing to kill Prince Nikolas.The movie is a nice watch, it is one movie that you watch, and then you gather your friends around to watch with you and just telling them that there is something at the end that they can't guess what it is. It is a nice addition to anyone's shelf of movie collections. The ending joke of the movie had Sherlock telling Watson that no matter what, Watson should not take up a career as an actor as he is a bad actor, which is why sometimes he (Sherlock) has to keep things from him.www.lagsreviews.com