‘Enola Holmes 3’ Review: A Kidnapping in Malta

In the “Enola Holmes” Netflix film franchise, set in 19th-century Britain, the heroine’s name is “alone” spelled backward. Enola’s wayward mother (Helena Bonham Carter) intended it as a manifesto: She was adamant that Enola (Millie Bobby Brown of “Stranger Things”) grow into an independent woman.

So when “Enola Holmes 3” opens on the morning of her wedding to Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), the bride naturally has mixed feelings about what marriage might cost her.

A jiu-jitsu expert with a flair for unscrambling ciphers, Enola spent the previous two movies staking her own claim on the Holmes name apart from her more famous elder brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill). She now runs a detective agency in London, where she solves crimes and fights bad guys (and gals) in a bodice and petticoat. All is well until Sherlock is kidnapped during Enola’s destination wedding in Malta, launching a mystery that entwines her personal life with the legacy of British colonialism.

If that sounds like an ambitious assignment, the plot mechanics are even more convoluted, involving cryptograms, hired spies and sunken treasure. Despite the muddle in this film directed by Philip Barantini, Brown shines, bringing a buoyancy and bite that makes the movie immensely more watchable than comparable entries into the young-adult action-adventure genre.

Without her charisma, Enola’s constant fourth-wall-breaking asides — “It’s all connected, but at this stage, I don’t know how,” she remarks to the audience at one point — would verge on an adolescent “Blue’s Clues.” She is instead a magnetic heroine, kicking butts, taking names and making “Holmes” mean Enola, too.

Enola Holmes 3
Rated PG-13 for corseted combat. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix.