Review: Sherlock Holmes

Short version: A well-crafted and visually enthralling reinterpretation of the Holmes mythos, with a high degree of attention and faithfulness to same; worth a watch for anyone who is willing to take their Holmes with a dash of irony.

Longer version, con MILD SPOILERS:

Robert Downey, Jr. plays a degenerate genius faced with a new and dangerous challenge; Jude Law plays the more traditional and upright man who acts as Abbott to Downey's Costello. They fight crime in a stylized but largely faithful rendition of Victorian England.

Sound good?

Now add in that their characters are adaptations of two of literature's most famous characters, and that the film is being directed by none other than Guy Ritchie, he of the camera ninjitsu and stylized violence.

If that doesn't still sound like it's worth a try, you're right; this movie isn't for you. As for myself, I went in to Sherlock Holmes a skeptic, and came out grateful for my willingness to try something new.

First of all, let me say: Yes, in this movie, Holmes and Watson beat people up. However, it is clear that this violence is a stylistic choice on the part of the director and the writer, not just somebody slapping the Holmes name onto a Victorian action movie. The detective work is all there, right down to the insane leaps of deduction that we could have made, too, if we'd had Holmes' peculiar body of knowledge; this Holmes just adds bareknuckle fighting and Bartitsu to his list of skills—skills which, as the writers have tried to make clear, are here and there implied in the original stories, and which are approached by the film in the same way it seems likely that Holmes would approach them: analytically and with a cold precision that a normal person could not muster at that speed.

Let me also say that the version of Holmes brought to life by Robert Downey Jr. and Ritchie's cinematography is one of my favorites of all time. Holmes is captured here as an eccentric genius, prone to bizarre behavior and serious self-abuse when not occupied by a case, lacking in social graces when his work does not require them, and self-absorbed in the extreme. In addition to Downey's acting, Ritchie's methods of portraying Holmes' thought process are mesmerizing; I really felt like I saw (and heard) the world the way a mind like Holmes would experience it.

I have to give credit to the other points of brilliance shining in this movie, too: Law's performance as Watson, the original straight man, is pitch-perfect, showcasing the character's intelligence and his occasional distaste for Holmes' lifestyle, and adding in a fast-paced banter that makes the relationship engaging and gives it the feel of a deep and lasting friendship. Mark Strong is delightfully scene-chewing as neo-fascist Lord Blackwood; Rachel McAdams does a great job as a character whose identity I will not spoil; and the rest of the crew are excellent, as well. Ritchie's camerawork is amazing throughout, and whoever is doing foley, prop, and set design for this movie deserves a nomination or two for capturing a filthy, crowded, dismal view of Victorian London, and for fascinating gadgets that manage to capture the genius of their creators without veering off into unnecessary steampunk.

Special praise has to be given to the script, though, above and beyond making fight scenes in a Holmes movie actually work. The script is not only engaging, witty, and atmospheric, but seems, to this amateur's view, painstakingly researched; it captures the climate—social, political, and meteorological—of England in that time; builds on scientific theory both from that era and (in the case of the inventions) a bit beyond; and gets its dates and facts straight both for actual English history and the (sadly) fictional history of Holmes, Watson, et al. And on the note of history, the most important of the script's strengths is the sense of love: the feeling that the writers knew the Holmes stories well and wanted to do them justice, even as they traveled a bit of a different path than more traditional versions of the character and his mythos. The story feels like fan-fiction, but more Laurie R. King than GeoCities: this is fan-fiction worthy of being published, provided it comes with the caveat that the writer knows where they've strayed from canon.

If I had to put a black mark on the film's record, it would be its preoccupation with being epic. The movie feels like it was born to be marketed as "Sherlock Holmes's greatest adventure yet", with the plot very publicly encompassing the entirety of England and involving a plan to—what else?—take over the world. Likewise, for as much as I praised the fighting for being interesting, one or two of the action segments felt a little shoe-horned in, as though this started as a much more action-oriented script and got cut down to size. The movie is at its best when it's the calculating, bizarre version of Holmes involved in a dark mystery, with the action blended in here and there as appropriate; a massive chase scene with a giant French bruiser feels like a maraschino cherry on my steak.

END SPOILERS

All that said, I highly recommend this movie, with the caveat that being too much of a purist about Holmes will make this movie feel like a drag. But if you can accept a mention here or there of fighting skills turning into Holmes beating people up with night-sticks, you'll find a clever little mystery and a lot of fun bits of Holmes trivia, wrapped up in a stylish and witty shell that even manages to be a little bit cerebral. I give this movie four out of five brilliant deductions, absolutely none of which are elementary.