Last week I read the announcement on the Onion about the sequel’s title so I had to really get cracking about our recent viewing of this via Netflix. It wasn’t part of my being stuck at home, nursing my ugly sinus infection marathon since it was on DVD.
Guy Ritchie takes a radical departure with the world’s most famous detective team by making the characters more physical, like a Victorian Era Batman and Robin. I’ve never read the novels, just a short story in grade school so my perceptions are more colored by Basil Rathbone who played a cerebral Holmes in 12 films; thus every other portrayal by Peter Cushing, Tom Baker, Brent Spiner as the android Data and the rest followed Rathbone’s interpretation. Not Robert Downey. His Holmes gets into fisticuffs for the hell of it.
Jude Law’s Watson is no slouch sidekick re-affirming Holmes’ amazing discoveries during their investigations. Here he’s a competent detective, skilled unarmed fighter and a source of stability for the rather neurotic Holmes. At times they’re engaged in friendly competitions over who can find key clues to solve the cases they undertake.
To kick off what may be a new ongoing franchise for Warner Brothers, Holmes and Watson begin the story by capturing a murderous cult leader named Lord Blackwood. This Blackwood claims to have immense magical powers which the heroes don’t believe because Science has proven such things to be nonsense. So the villain is executed, declared dead by Watson and buried, thus making this appear to be a short movie or one in which Moriarty will take over as the primary nemesis. Instead Blackwood rises from the dead, leaves his tomb in a dramatic fashion and proceeds to murder some very specific victims. Should word of this get out, London will freak out. That’s as far as I’ll take it otherwise it delves into spoiler territory.
Overall I did like it, not for the action but for the resolution. Back in 1999 Tim Burton started with a similar approach in his take on Sleepy Hollow; Johnny Depp’s Ichabod Crane was a constable from New York, instead of a teacher, sent to figure out some gruesome murders taking place around the infamous community. Crane used the tools from the Age of Reason to debunk the Headless Horseman as superstition. It was an awesome premise Reason/Science versus Magic/Superstition. Sadly, Burton painted himself into a corner, couldn’t find a resolution and went with a lazy solution…Crane’s mother was really a witch, therefore magic was required to defeat the villains. Holmes sticks to its guns despite the revelations having a Scooby-Doo aroma.
Ritchie’s rapid-fire action and observation sequences were pretty new back with his past work Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels ten years ago. Today I found them rather routine since you’ll see similar techniques used on the audience with the shows Psych and the current run of Doctor Who. These may help you “see” the gears turning in Holmes’ head but the novelty wore off for me through lesser imitators.
Sherlock Holmes remains worth watching as a demonstration of how London, not Hollywood, successfully re-invented a revered institutional character.
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