Film review: ‘Sherlock Holmes’
Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor, no question, able to bring his idiosyncratic sensibility to everything from Charlie Chaplin to a comic-book superhero.
But the thought of him playing Sherlock Holmes was enough to give even the biggest Downey fan pause. British, brilliant, all that? could he pull that off?
Turns out there was no need for worry. Playing literature’s greatest detective as a sort of self-loathing action hero, Downey has an absolute blast. thanks to his performance, so do we.
Mind you, those who are put off by a depiction of Holmes as the sort of fellow who goes in for underground bare-knuckled boxing (he thinks that through as much as he does anything else) will have much to be put off by.
While this may be closer to Arthur Conan Doyle’s original depiction of Holmes, audiences used to Basil Rathbone-like portrayals will be jarred.
This is a rock-and-roll Holmes without the attendant music. in director Guy Ritchie’s telling, he’s still off-the-charts brilliant. He’s just kind of a skilled ruffian, to boot.
Dr. Watson (Jude Law) also knows his way around a fight. They’re a version of a 19th-century dynamic duo, something that also may prove unsettling to fans of previous movies; Nigel Bruce, Watson to Rathbone’s Holmes in films like The Hound of the Baskervilles, was more likely to take a punch than deliver one.
Oh, and the case isn’t any great shakes, either an occult-themed series of murders linked to the nefarious Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who manages to bedevil London even after we see him hanged.
With all that, what does the film have to recommend it?
Downey. and Law, as well. Their banter, their wit and their delivery are a delight.
Watson is engaged to Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly), who is both jealous of Holmes and rankled by his off-putting manner. He knows everything, it seems, except the proper time to shut up.
Watson is torn. He is moving out of the flat he shares with Holmes, and trying to wean himself from assisting Holmes as he solves cases. But it’s hard to tear himself away.
Film review: ‘Sherlock Holmes’
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