Sherlock Holmes

In 1890 London, private detective Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr. John Watson prevent the ritualistic murder of a woman by Lord Henry Blackwood, a noble who has killed five women previously and claims to have supernatural powers. Inspector Lestrade and the police arrest Blackwood. Two months later, Watson, engaged to Mary Morstan, is moving out of 221B Baker Street and ending his partnership with Holmes, exhausted of his eccentricities. Blackwood summons Holmes before he is hanged and warns him that three more deaths will occur and that he cannot stop them. Blackwood is subsequently hanged and pronounced dead by Watson. Holmes is visited by former adversary Irene Adler, who asks him to find a missing man named Luke Reordan. Holmes follows her when she leaves and observes she is working for a man who Holmes deduces is a professor, and that he intimidates Adler. Blackwood's tomb is found broken into and Reordan's corpse is inside his coffin. Following a series of clues from the body, Holmes and Watson find Reordan's lab and discover experiments attempting to merge science with magic. Later, Holmes is abducted and brought to the Temple of the Four Orders, a secret magical fraternity. The Order head Lord Chief Justice Sir Thomas Rotheram introduces Holmes to U.S. Ambassador Standish and Home Secretary Lord Coward, and they ask Holmes to stop Blackwood, a former member of the society and Rotheram's secret illegitimate son. That night, Rotheram drowns in his bath as Blackwood watches. Coward calls a meeting of the Order and nominates Blackwood to take command of it, and Blackwood reveals himself to them. When he explains his plan to seize control of the British Empire and reconquer the United States, Standish attempts to shoot him but bursts into flames when he fires his gun, and flees out a window to his death. Holmes studies the rituals of the Order and recognizes that Blackwood's murders have been in accordance with their beliefs, and his final act will be to murder the members of Parliament. With the aid of Lestrade, Holmes surrenders and is taken to Coward, where he sees evidence on his clothes to deduce that Blackwood has conducted a ceremony in the sewers beneath the Palace of Westminster. Holmes escapes and enters the sewers with Watson and Adler, who find Blackwood's men guarding a device developed by Reordan, designed to release cyanide gas into the Parliament chambers and kill all but Blackwood's supporters, to whom he has secretly given an antidote. Blackwood comes before Parliament and announces their impending deaths, then attempts to activate the cyanide device by remote control; Adler is able to deactivate it with a controlled explosion and takes the canisters of cyanide. Coward and Blackwood's supporters are apprehended as Blackwood flees Parliament. Holmes chases Adler and she leads him to the top of the incomplete Tower Bridge, where Blackwood incapacitates Adler and then fights Holmes. Blackwood falls through the scaffolding and Holmes reveals he has deduced that all of his supposed supernatural feats were achieved through science and theatrical trickery, aided by Reordan's experiments. A crane collapses, causing Blackwood to be ensnared and hanged in chains off the bridge. Holmes revives Adler, who tells him that her employer is Professor Moriarty, and he is not to be underestimated. As Watson moves out of 221B, a police constable reports to Holmes that a dead officer was found near Blackwood's device. Moriarty used the confrontations with Adler and Blackwood as a diversion while he took a key component, based on the infant science of radio, from the machine. Holmes considers the case reopened.