{"id":7343,"date":"2009-12-30T19:56:44","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T19:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=7343"},"modified":"2009-12-30T21:51:32","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T21:51:32","slug":"sherlock-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2009\/12\/30\/sherlock-holmes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sherlock Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest big screen adaptation of the famous London detective<\/a> is a mixed bag that tries to\u00a0reinterpret the character as a Victorian-era James Bond.<\/p>\n

When the news broke that Guy Ritchie<\/a> was directing a new big budget film based on Arthur Conan Doyle<\/a>‘s character, alarm bells began to ring.\u00a0He broke through in the late 90s\u00a0as a director of passable cockney gangster films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels<\/a> (1998) and Snatch<\/a> (2000).<\/p>\n

But he then he went on to direct two of the most embarrassing disasters of the decade: Swept Away<\/a> (2002) was a laughable remake of an Italian film with his famous wife in the lead role, whilst Revolver<\/a> (2005) was an\u00a0impenetrable\u00a0gangster drama which involved Jason Statham arguing with himself in a lift<\/a> and Ray Liotta shouting in his underpants<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After teaming up with producer Joel Silver<\/a> for the average but not disastrous RockNRolla<\/a> (2008), he was entrusted with bringing Holmes to the big screen after some eagle-eyed person had spotted the copyright on the famous character was due to expire.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0imaginatively\u00a0titled Sherlock Holmes<\/a><\/strong> is the final result and opts for a different take on the popular perception of Holmes. Gone is the suave, elegant figure that featured in Sidney Paget’s original illustrations<\/a> or\u00a0Basil Rathbone’s performances<\/a> on film.<\/p>\n

Instead Ritchie has opted for a less clean cut figure, who even indulges in bare knuckle boxing although they have preserved his\u00a0penetrating\u00a0intelligence and wit.<\/p>\n

The story sees Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr<\/a>) and Watson (Jude Law<\/a>) trying to solve a conspiracy by a secret society (based on the Freemasons<\/a>) which involves a villainous\u00a0Lord (Mark Strong<\/a>) and an old girlfriend (Rachel McAdams<\/a>).<\/p>\n

It plays a little like Holmes rewritten by Dan Brown<\/a> (The Da Vinci Holmes<\/em> anyone?) but the screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg\u00a0doesn’t deviate as much from the stories as fans might have feared.<\/p>\n

On the plus side, Downey and Law are actually well cast in the leading roles and have a nice chemistry together, even if a little too much innuendo is implied with regards to their relationship.<\/p>\n

The film largely rests on Downey who manages to convince and engage as an intelligent action man with a passable British accent, even though his pronunciation at times is a little curious.<\/p>\n

Strong makes for a reasonable, if one dimensional villain, although McAdams is badly miscast and Kelly Reilly<\/a> (as Watson’s love interest) is also given a wafer-thin role that does little justice to her talent as an actress.<\/p>\n

Victorian London is recreated with a clever mix of set design and CGI, although there are sequences (especially the climax on Tower Bridge) where it doesn’t fully work and comes across like an overblown computer game.<\/p>\n

Another downside is that Ritchie can’t help himself when it comes to his trademark ‘slowing-down and then\u00a0speeded up’ editing style. This is employed whenever key plot or character points are explained and soon becomes irritating.<\/p>\n

The script also has the feel of being re-written several times in order to spell out key plot points.<\/p>\n

This doesn’t hide some glaring inconsistencies (including one death sequence that is ludicrous in retrospect) but given that Holmes’ favoured method\u00a0(imitated by many fictional detectives since such as Poirot<\/a> and Columbo<\/a>) is to explain how he solved problems, it probably won’t jar audiences too much.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes isn’t quite as bad as one might have feared, which isn’t exactly a ringing\u00a0endorsement but indicates that there is a possible franchise ahead for Downey as the pipe smoking detective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest big screen adaptation of the famous London detective is a mixed bag that tries to reinterpret the character as a Victorian-era James Bond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,8],"tags":[567],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}