Ben Saw: Sherlock Holmes

A rare example of accurate trailers....



I don't want to bury the lead: I felt pretty warmly towards Sherlock Holmes. But did you know that Sherlock Holmes was a total badass? I don't mean 'badass' in the generic sense of being a cool guy, but 'badass' as in someone who could walk in to a biker bar, start a fight and KO everyone in the room. Well, he's that kind of badass in this movie. The differences between the two Holmes' have been much-commented upon, but a proper review really can't avoid the subject. This difference might take you by surprise if you're only familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle's literary creation as Doyle's Holmes is a cerebral, witty eccentric who doesn't usually encounter direct danger in the stories. But, should you have seen the trailer for Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, you would have known to expect wall-to-wall fights and a Holmes who is more master ninja than great detective. In quality and often in genre as well, trailers seem designed to mislead, but that's not the case with Guy Ritchie's new Christmas blockbuster. The trailer said 'action movie with a mystery riding shotgun'.......or maybe Robert Downey, Jr's charisma riding shotgun while the mystery rides with the luggage and jumper cables.........and such is what we got. There was no playing coy about the fact that this is 'not your grandmother's Sherlock Holmes.'

Well, it wasn't MY grandmother's Sherlock Holmes at least. I saw it with her and, in her own understated way, she hated it. She genuinely enjoyed the Doyle original and held the incredibly faithful Granada series featuring Jeremy Brett in high-esteem. She'd never dispute the point that Holmes lead an exciting and often dangerous life, but Ritchie's Holmes was dedicated to turning Doyle's charaters' asides on past moments of violence and combat in to the crash-bang, hyperbolized heart of the movie. Not grandma's bag. The modern sensibilities and touches of raunch were also, for her, unwelcome and jarring.

But that's grandma; she's great and all, but I don't generally turn to her for an open-minded take on action movies. Moreover, I'm also loyal to the Doyle canon and the Jeremy Brett series, but I just don't think it's appropriate to judge a movie centrally on the basis of how slavishly it mimics its source material. This was supposed to be a modern re-imagining of the Holmes mythos that keeps the spirit of the characters, but not necessarily the pacing or narrative thrust. Thus Robert Downey, Jr. as Rock-Em Sock-Em Sherlock.

The result being that Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes is a fun and, by blockbuster standards, intellectually spry popcorn flick.

As the trailer suggest, the plot is silly: The film opens with occult criminal Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) captured and, so we think, executed. However, Blackwood warns Holmes that this is only the beginning of his plan before he is hanged. Sure enough, Blackwood appears to be resurrected and it is up to Holmes and Watson to figure out what his seemingly supernatural masterplan is, although the audience learns that the ultimate goal is to *sigh* take over the world. Meanwhile Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), cunning criminal and love interest to Holmes, is shoehorned in to the plot as the agent of a shadowy figure.

For me, it's really all about the performances in this movie and that discussion has to begin and end with Robert Downey Jr. Downey Jr. is remarkably good at importing a recognizable series of tics and mannerisms in to virtually all of his roles while still creating distinct and reasonably complex characters. As a result his charisma is often dazzling and it's put to good use here in a Holmes that is fun to watch but also a recognizable modern incarnation of the Doyle original. Most of the key traits are still there: the brilliance, the eccentricity, the arrogance, the substance abuse, the wit, the rigid morals, the obsessiveness, the remoteness, but the movie emphasizes them in new and different ratios. Out goes the cocaine abuse and gentility, in comes incredible combat prowess, one-liners and a more modern set of sensibilities (Watson: "Holmes, does your depravity know no bounds?" Holmes: "No").

Meanwhile, Jude Law is engaging and fairly grounded as Watson, providing a straight man and a credible counterpoint to Downey Jr's Holmes. Saying they come across as a couple speaks to a certain shallowness in people's perceptions of male relationships, but you see why they are friends; they have that kind of on-screen chemistry. Given the the caterwauling about the bastardization of Doyles' work, it's ironic that Law's Watson is probably the most faithful version put to screen amongst the iconic interpretations. The role has often been played for bumbling comic relief when, in fact, Watson was a highly-decorated war hero with a successful medical practice. As this suggests, he was both smart (but certainly not Holmes' equal) and a tough bastard, although obviously not to anything like the superheroic degree the movie shows.



The marquee performances go pretty sharply downhill from there. Mark Strong (as the villain) has been great in other roles, but is given nothing to do here. McAdams is an actress I'm predisposed to liking, but her part is especially poorly written and she is unable to match the winning tone of Downey Jr and Law. Prettiness aside, she is a mostly unwelcome addition to this movie. The bit players are all forgettable, but Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade ad Kelly Reilly as Holmes' landlady Mary Morstan are both able straight men for Holmes.

The more inside baseball aspects of the movie mostly fall on the 'not very good' side of 'watchable.' Besides some decent bon mots for Holmes and Watson, the script is a bit of a mess. The plot was simultaneously predictable and simple while being excessively twisty and arcane. I hated that we had Holmes fighting a villain who aspired to take over the world instead of a more down-to-earth villain and that the 'detective work' was far less about investigation and far more about the film noir school of tracking down leads from one nasty scrape to another. The camera work is, in Ritchie fashion, unnecessarily stylized and indicative of a pointless need for 'cool' when the two leads provided more than enough without directorial tricks. The CGI was unnecessary and, to my admittedly jaundiced eye, somewhat behind the times. On the plus-side, the movie felt broadly grounded in its time period and had a wealth of clever winks and nods to the old Holmes stories for the active watchers in the audience. As action blockbusters go, Holmes does try to be smarter than most.

It's worth pausing a second for a few words about the action. They have an effective gimmick in the movie where Holmes thinks through entire fights in narrated slow-motion before actually delivering blows; it does a good job of conveying that the Holmes character is genuinely a thinking man's brawler and differentiates the movie's otherwise fairly generic fight scenes. As with Iron Man, I was much more interested in seeing the leads act than watching the comparatively uninspiring fights. In Holmes, however, Ritchie seems insistent on throwing in another action sequence every 15-20 minutes or so to wake up the blockbuster zombies that can't handle dialogue that's not punctuated by gunfire and bodyblows (a cheap shot, but it's still a pandering habit of Hollywood's). Better editing would have shortened these and made the movie feel significantly less over-the-top.

I'm hoping the right picture is coming together here: flawed though it is, Sherlock Holmes is fun. At times it is a lot of fun and, on reflection, I've decided it's a surprisingly successful approach to the character despite my objections. If you are willing to go in with modest expectations and a relaxed attitude, it's a very good time at the movies. It might even win you over if you go in hating it; I went in expecting the worst (because of that trailer) and came out pretty pleased. If you go in expecting older screen adaptations of Holmes, you are missing the point. There are a lot of things worth fixing and I hope they address them in the sequel they are clearly hell-bent on making, but Holmes is worth catching at some point. Just watch the trailer first so you don't go in to it surprised.


Grade: B

Best Scene: The first scene at 221b Baker St.