The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

The world’s two greatest masters of the art of deduction, Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud, meet for the first time in this delightful mystery adventure based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Meyer. This stylishly directed entertainment boasts a superb cast headed by Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Alan Arkin as Freud and, in a brilliant example of off-beat casting, Robert Duvall as Dr. Watson. To this ingenious tale of detection, addiction and abduction must be added the excitement of the chase - capped by a sword fight on top of a puffing locomotive roaring across Europe!

Writer Nicholas Meyer (who went on to write two of the best Star Trek films) made his bones with his adaptation of his bestselling novel, directed by Herbert Ross. Fanciful and entertaining, it imagines what might have happened had Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) convinced Sherlock Holmes (Nicol Williamson) to seek a cure for his cocaine addiction from Dr. Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). This meeting of the minds takes a turn into adventure when Holmes and Freud team up to solve a kidnapping mystery. Arkin is intriguingly likable as Freud, while Williamson makes a keen and frenetic Holmes. Duvall is almost unrecognizable as the avuncular, phlegmatic Watson. Laurence Olivier turns up as Professor Moriarty, who is hardly the criminal mastermind that the drug-deluded Holmes believes. --Marshall Fine