Pursuit to Algiers (1945)

“Oh, so the old girl has lost her emeralds, eh?”, 19 May 2020

Holmes and Waston are engaged to escort a foreign royal back to his home country.  As you would expect, there are those who would like to see them fail.

If you read what’s been written about Pursuit to Algiers across the internet, you’ll quickly discover that many feel this is among the worst of the Rathbone Holmes’ films.  While I certainly understand the arguments against the movie, I at least find enough enjoyment in it to give it a 5/10 rating.

The problems with Pursuit to Algiers are many.  Start with the ridiculous manner in which Holmes and Watson are contacted.  Why not just approach Holmes?  Why go through all the unnecessary cloak and dagger?  It’s all so silly.  Next, Holmes spots the baddies straight away.  He even catches them red-handed (literally) on at least two occasions trying to kill either him or the royal under his protection.  Why not do something about it?  Why let these guys go free to carry out another attempt?  It’s preposterous.  Then there’s the whole subplot about the stolen emeralds.  Even though Holmes says he’s not interested when he and Watson hear about the robbery, you just know they’ll get brought back up.  And, it’s not hard to spot who has them.  Next, there are a number of ship passengers that unnecessarily act like suspicious criminals.  In real life, these harmless people would most likely come across as harmless people.  Most people don’t act that shady when going about their daily lives.  Finally, not that any of these Holmes’ films had huge budgets, but you can tell Universal was cutting corners.  Filming aboard what is supposed to be a ship is about as cheap as you can get with no large sets and a minimal cast.  Throw in some uber-thick fog to hide other deficiencies and you can save even more money.  Oh, I wrote “finally”, but one last thing - Rathbone looks tired.  There’s no sparkle to his performance.  It looks to me like he’s ready to move on to something else.  

Regardless of these issues, there are still things I enjoy each time I’ve watched Pursuit to Algiers.  Instead of a long list as I did with the weaknesses, I’ll limit this to my absolute favorite moment.  I’ve seen this film on at least three occasions, but that ending never fails to catch me off-guard.  There’s a twist near the end that somehow works on me everytime. An ending that effective is worth something when it comes to a rating.

5/10