Sherlock Holmes
If I’m honest I wasn’t really expecting much from this. Most people that know me are already aware that I think of Robert Downey Jr as the most talented actor working today, in any genre, and have done so from before his enforced removal from the profession due to his custodial sentence. I have yet to honestly see him make a hash of anything he has done. Granted, sometimes the material has been a little skittish, but his effort and enthusiasm for his parts in any production that he undertakes repeatedly underlines not only an admirable work ethic, but is backed up by a screen presence that is increasingly rare these days.
So when I heard that he would be taking on the role of England’s smartest private dick, I knew the film would be entertaining. When I heard Guy Ritchie was going to be directing it, I was a little less enamoured by the prospect, wondering just what Ritchie would make of the time period, being more used to directing gritty, modern British drama. Completing this formidable trio was Dr Watson, played by Jude Law, another highly talented actor whose performances and project choices have been sometimes perplexing, but always intriguing.
Confident in his own abiities and often driven to distraction by them, he fails in so many other areas as to be almost pitiful. Downey Jr plays with Holmes’ character delightfully, in a fashion not too far removed from Depp’s Jack Sparrow, so it would be difficult to imagine this Holmes as playable by anybody else apart from him.
Watson too has had a makeover from the overweight, haughty and flappable surgeon we have come to expect. Jude Law brilliantly turns him into a capable and formidable opponent both physically and mentally, with a sharp mind and even sharper wit. Both characters are eminently watchable throughout and seeing them in physical action is often as real a treat as when they are using their brains to solve a less physcially demanding problem.
Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong make up the rest of the main cast and are both equally compelling as Irene Adler (alluring, wanton troublemaker) and Lord Blackwood (brooding, evil incarnate) respectively, complimenting Both Downey Jnr and Law with some fine performances of their own.
So if we were ticking boxes on the three main players involved, it would have been a grateful nod for Robert Downey Jnr and a couple of ‘I’m not so sure’ for Law and Ritchie. I couldn’t really see how Jude Law could pass off a portly Victorian doctor, or how Ritchie could envelop anybody into the murky backstreets of old London town with any realism or feel for the period.
It was at this point that I began to understand Ritchie’s approach to Holmes and his cohorts. This was the Holmes and Watson that had been unfettered by thirty years of British television and like many others, my almost dyed in the wool vision of the couple originated largely from that view.
But instead of a pair of starch collared professionals, Ritchie takes us on a whole different kind of trip. Portraying Holmes as brilliant, sparkling mind, but lacking in many of the social graces that most of us take for granted.
The cinemtography was surprisingly accomplished for the period and the Direction from Ritchie was mostly on the money though appeared to be a little haphazard at times, with a rather overlong second act, seemingly (thought not altogether surprisingly) more comfortable with prolongued periods of action rather than anything approaching pedestrianism or moments of contemplation.
Altogether, however, despite these small and mostly irrelevant annoyances, Ritchie has done a great job a breathing new life into an old standard and no doubt providing Downey Jnr with another franchise to turn up and do the business for every couple of years.
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