This past week the movie “Enola Holmes 2” was released on Netflix. It starts where the first movie left off, with Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) opening her own detective agency. She struggles to get business until Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss) hires her to find her sister, Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd) who has been missing for a week. Sarah’s disappearance is not as simple as it seems and is connected to a much larger conspiracy. As Enola investigates, she discovers that Sarah’s disappearance is connected to her brother’s case. He’s investigating a blackmailer stealing government money, but he’s struggling to find any leads.
Sherlock (Henry Cavill) tells Enola that “every time I pull a thread it loosens, and vanishes, and reappears somewhere else. He’s leading me a merry dance. It’s infuriating.” The case is a dangerous one, and when Enola is following a lead, she arrives at the scene of a murder. The police find her there, and Enola decides to go on the run rather than cooperate with the police.
To aid Enola in her escape from the police, allies from the first movie reappear — her mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) and Edith (Susan Wokoma) all return to help Enola with her case. One of the highlights of this movie is the chemistry between Enola and Tewkesbury, and the scenes between the two of them. Enola has to go to a ball and runs into Tewkesbury there. As a young lord, he is immersed in politics and is known as a young and eligible bachelor. However, while Enola is outside of her comfort zone and anxious about the social differences between them, Tewkesbury is just as uncomfortable with the dangers of Enola’s job.
They help each other adjust to their work and Enola teaches Tewkesbury the basic skills of fighting. He is a key player in the last action scene at the movie’s climax. It cuts between three different fights happening simultaneously and is full of theatrics. The fights are fun to watch and while not quite as comedic, they carry a similar energy to the “Pirates of the Caribbean.” They’re held in interesting places like the rafters, a dressing room and a stage. These scenes also feature weapons like cutlasses, knives and fist fighting. There are other scenes of high tension held on rooftops and wagons featuring smoke bombs, explosions and lances.
The scenes build tension throughout the movie. There are scenes of stalking, breaking into different places and high-intensity chases. They’re balanced quite nicely with lighter scenes that develop the characters and their relationships. We get to see a lot more of the relationship between Sherlock and Enola in this movie. She helps him return home when he’s drunk, and they advise each other on their cases. The two of them rely on each other in a way we didn’t see in the first movie, and they have a very sweet dynamic. There are scenes like that scattered throughout the movie — flashbacks to Enola as a child with her mother, changes in the cinematography to overlay the screen with sketch drawings of Chapman’s actions and a scene between Enola and Tewkesbury at the park. Overall “Enola Holmes 2” is a fun watch. It’s a good mystery with great character development, comedy and action scenes.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5