Downey is no Sherlock Holmes, but it works
Take it from a lifelong fan of Arthur Conan Doyle: Robert Downey Jr. is so not Sherlock Holmes.
That’s not a hindrance — in fact, it’s a big help — as he and director Guy Ritchie bring Conan Doyle’s dusty Victorian-age detective into the modern world.
Enough of the trappings are left in their action romp “Sherlock Holmes.” there are lightning-fast cerebrations, the encyclopedic knowledge of London, the compulsive single-mindedness, the vain one-upmanship to make Downey a reasonably faithful embodiment of the figure Conan Doyle created.
And, of course, this is Downey, whose career resurgence rests on his ability to make the most unlikely role his own. He doesn’t look like the classic Holmes. He plays the man as a scamp and he’s after laughs as much as lawbreakers.
But Downey does a great Brit. He lives large in the part and brings a human spark to cold egghead Holmes.
Revisionists have done a number on Holmes before, so why shouldn’t Ritchie put his London-rogues-and-rascals spin on Holmes and cast the detective into a brawn-over-brain action epic? after all, Conan Doyle’s tales of Holmes — particularly the novel-length ones — could be action rip-roarers.
The failing of Ritchie is the drab plot built around Holmes, an uninspired tale of a secret society and potentially supernatural doings.
It’s nonsense, a dumb Hollywood treatment that’s beneath Holmes but is made watchable, even exhilarating at times, by clever chases and scuffles, a superb recreation of old London in its splendor and squalor, and the amiable interplay of the actors.
Jude Law heads the supporting cast as Holmes’ colleague Watson, less a loyal sidekick in Ritchie’s creation than an odd-couple roomie in a bickering-buddy bromance.
Ravishing in every scene, Rachel McAdams was born to wear the sort of velvety, frilly Victorian garb she dons as Irene Adler, a cunning foil to Holmes as well as his romantic interest.
Conan Doyle’s Holmes had little time or respect for women, save, in one thin story, a schemer named Irene Adler, the only woman who ever outsmarted him.
Downey is no Sherlock Holmes, but it works
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