Sherlock Holmes Review

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 , Posted by Should I See It at 11:36 PM



Film: Sherlock Holmes
Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong.
Plot: A remake of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock Holmes struggles against a villain who has dreams of taking over London and the world.


There are two words I hate when talking about film adaptations of ‘classics,’ and they are modern re-telling. While the film itself is set in ‘Victorian London’ (and I use those words liberally) Sherlock Holmes, for all intensive purposes, is ‘modern’.

There’s no doubt that some elements of the Sherlock Holmes persona have become stereotyped: The deer stalker hat and ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ never actually appear in the books, and thankfully don’t make an appearance in this film. But Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes who is a boxer, an explosives and chemical warfare expert and a stunt man who doesn’t hesitate jumping out of a window into the Thames, regardless of the diseases he would catch when doing so. This Sherlock Holmes feels even further from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original character.



While watching the film I wondered if the film makers have even read any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. The plot is not so much a whodunit, but a whydunit, which removes any sort of suspense. And of course the why is not really very interesting: like all bad guys, he wants to take over the world.

The film breaks one of the cardinal rules of the detective story: “The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.” The ‘big’ secret of the film, how bad guy (I can’t even remember his name, that’s how much I cared) manages to ‘rise from the dead,’ (seriously) rests in a super duper wonder drug developed from a flower only found in the Amazon Rainforest, or some such rubbish. The audience’s insight to this remarkable clue rests in a two second shot of the aforementioned flower in a midget’s laboratory (seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!).

The plot vaguely touches on Victorian England’s preoccupation with the supernatural. However, the introduction of the Temple of the Four Orders (read: Knight’s Templar) turns the film into a Victorian National Treasure.


 
There isn’t any air in this film; I know London air at this time would have been smelly at best, but let the picture breathe a little. The shots feel tight and enclosed. When we do get some sense of space is ruined by particularly bad CGI. Surely technology has come so far that doing CGI to buildings should be unnoticeable.

Robert Downey Jr.’s accent makes him unintelligible. Half of the time I could barely understand what he was saying. June Law as Watson is actually very good.

The film bored me. The film was so obsessed with getting as many (poorly done) special effects and fight scenes in as possible, it seemed to forget about the story.


Should I See It?

If you want real mystery, the real Sherlock Holmes, read the books.




All pictures courtesy of Warner Brothers.
Sherlock Holmes Official Site here.