Pursuit to Algiers (1945) is yet another in the Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson films. According to Wikipedia, this version contains some elements from Doyle’s stories, but I suspect is rightly considered to be extraneous to the Doyle canon.
As such, it is deficient in the pleasures of the purely intellectual deductive capabilities of Holmes, but also lacks the buffoonery some of the movies have inflicted on the faithful Watson when played by Bruce. That said, there’s much to enjoy in this installment. Twice we’re given enormous head fakes that had this audience going one way, only to find out the movie is fleeing down an entirely different path. As a bonus, in the first one we’re permitted to see that Mr. Bruce could move outside the acting boundaries normally imposed upon him by the strictures of these movies; glancing at his biography, I see he sustained severe injuries in World War I, took up acting after service, and mainly played characters much like his Watson. That, perhaps, was a pity, as for a brief moment I could see a set of deep emotions briefly afflict him, before events made the sequence moot and he could return to his old self.
Also of particular interest in a movie about a supremely logical detective is that he is asked to be, basically, a bodyguard for the presumptive king (of a fictional country), under the assertion that losing the king would be a blow … to democracy!
Excuse the laughter.
Whether an artifact of the speed at which these films were produced (14 films between 1939 and 1946) or the whimsy of the scriptwriter (Leonard Lee), this intellectually suspect statement has no impact on the film, so worry not. The cleverness is not in the intellectual ideas at play, but at two sets of men playing a tense game for high stakes. Add in a display or two of Holmes’ sense of extremely dry humor, and this movie, despite a couple of characters with potential that fall away, under-utilized, is worth some lazy time, especially if you have a cat needing a lap.
