Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey, Jr.

Warning! Reviews and Discussions may include Spoilers!

I have to think that people these days aren't really that familiar with Sherlock Holmes. After all, the books while classics are over one hundred years old. Sherlock Holmes movies peaked with the Basil Rathbone versions, and those don't even seem to make it to television anymore with the exception of an occasional showing of Hound of the Baskervilles. There was a fairly recent go from Britain of filming all of the original Conan Doyle stories for television. I tried watching and found them somewhat dull, and I'm a fan.

When I was a kid, I loved watching the Basil Rathbone Holmes on television. There seemed to be one on every week. I read all of the original stories and books. I was pretty excited about Nicholas Meyer's Seven Percent Solution update on the Holmes mythos. Now my kids seem to know about Holmes, but I don't think they've seen a single older Holmes movie or read any of the literature. Holmes is part of the modern zeitgeist, like King Arthur or Robin Hood.

Now comes the Robert Downey version of Sherlock Holmes, and maybe because it is advertised as an action film, my kids very much wanted to go see it.

It turns out it's pretty good. Yes, it's an action-adventure flick. I talked to my father about it and he said that's just not Sherlock Holmes. But I remember a lot of chases, disguises, and gun play in the original stories. I think it works really well, and there is still plenty of the cerebral activity that sets Sherlock apart from the normal man.

Robert Downey is excellent as Holmes. The audience can clearly see how Holmes observes every detail around him and analyzes how people and facts are related to the case or problem he is working on. We also see Holmes as an addict. He is addicted to problem solving, to working on a case. Not just any case, as we see when Watson goes through the mail and Holmes tosses off solutions to peoples' request with no more effort than casual conversation. Holmes must have a true conundrum to work on. This is very true to the original character. If Holmes is not properly occupied, he finds ways to distract himself: experimenting on himself, experimenting on the dog, inventing silencers for dogs, fighting and using drugs.

Jude Law is fine as Watson, and the repartee and physical interplay with Holmes provides much of the humor. Law also helps move Watson away from the older cloddish image established by Nigel Bruce in the Basil Rathbone version of Holmes. Law is actually much closer to the printed version of Watson, who was a veteran fresh from the fighting in Afghanistan.

I am somewhat ambivalent about Guy Ritchie's direction. His depiction of Holmes' thought processes, though limited to fist fights, works very well, and there are some lovely shots and some nice camera movement. But at other times, the framing and editing flow just don't work and disrupted my suspension of disbelief.
As to the story, I won't go into any detail. Suffice it to say that I think it works as a Holmes story. There are mystifying events that eventually are explained by Holmes, and everything seems to make sense. Some liberties are taken with the Holmes canon, such as the treatment of Irene Adler, Moriarty and Watson's fiancée, but none that take away from the story and none that will be noticed by any but real Holmes buffs. The only thing I found odd was the choice to place the story right at the moment when Watson is leaving his co-occupancy of 221B Baker Street for his marriage, as I would think this might cause problems in the inevitable sequel with getting Holmes and Watson together again.