Sherlock Holmes Review

When it was first announced that Guy Ritchie (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, “Snatch”) was reinventing Sherlock Holmes as a brawling action hero, I thought it sounded like a laughably terrible idea.

I mean, it didn’t sound real. It seemed more like an idea based on one of those fake trailers at the start of “Tropic Thunder.”

Still, the casting of the brilliant Robert Downey Jr. to the play the brilliant detective combined with my relatively low expectations and resulted in a surprisingly enjoyable movie going experience.

The plot — well, you actually won’t believe how much the plot doesn’t matter. Something about a occult-loving bad guy Lord Blackwood (a thoroughly joyless Mark Strong) possibly coming back from the dead and terrorizing London.

But, again, that stuff doesn’t really matter because the start of the show is Downey.

As Holmes, Downey brings a welcome, jittery energy to the part that deviates from previous, more-aristocratic interpretations of Holmes. It’s almost as if he’s SO smart that he can’t speak quickly enough to keep up with his brain. Downey is absolutely at the top of his game in a situation where, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he mailed in a bit. Still, as he did in “Iron Man”, Downey isn’t interested in slumming it in a dumb action movie – his talent completely elevates the proceedings.

The best stuff parts of the movie are Downey’s scenes with Jude Law (sporting an unexpectedly flattering mustache) as Dr. Watson. Here, Watson is sort of recast as the brawns behind Holmes’ brain, but remains smart enough to challenge his partner and bicker with him as if they were an old married couple. Downey and Law have an easy appealing chemistry that makes you believe they’d remain friends even as Holmes is insulting Watson’s fiancée or almost getting him killed.

In fact, the chemistry between Holmes and Watson is so strong, that Rachel McAdams ends up being underused and underwhelming as Irene Adler, Holmes’ on-again/off-again love interest. (Hopefully they’ll actually give the immensely likable McAdams something to do if the Irene character is in the sequel this movie blatantly set up.)

Still, the charms of Downey and Law (who looks a little relieved not to be carrying a movie) prove more than enough to make this movie work.

They get a big-time assist from Ritchie, whose directorial style proved surprisingly fitting for this movie. In “Holmes”, Ritchie uses his favored quick cuts and out-of-sequence storytelling to give the audience a peek into how Holmes’ mind works. In several sequences, we get a chance to see how Holmes works out the mechanics of a brawl before it even happens, and in others Ritchie allows us to see the little details Holmes spotted and which led him to his conclusions.

More importantly, Ritchie and screenwriters Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg’s seemingly disastrous concept (at least in my first impression) for updating Sherlock Holmes paid off admirably.

I mean, if we were going to get yet another Sherlock Holmes story, why WOULD you make a conventional adaptation? Why not take a chance by using more contemporary filmmaking techniques and turning a genius into more of a man of action?

That’s what this movie did and (thanks in large part to a great lead performance) it turned out to be one of the more enjoyable action flicks of the year.

Sherlock Holmes…B+