Susan Granger’s review of “Sherlock Homes” (Warner Bros.)
This 21st century re-imagining of Scotland Yard’s most famous detective is less Arthur Conan Doyle and more Guy Ritchie. With fast-paced martial-arts frenzy, it’s an extreme makeover, a farce/comedy/mystery with bizarrely homoerotic overtones between brawny, insouciant Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his refined companion, Dr. John Watson (Jude Law).
As the tale unfolds in 1891, there are a series of brutal, ritualistic murders in London. Holmes and Watson arrive just in time to save the latest victim and apprehend the killer, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), before the arrival of Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan). On the eve of his execution, Blackwood, a master of the dark arts, taunts Holmes that death has no power over him, that his hanging is part of his diabolical plan to destroy Britain. As the killings continue after his demise, Blackwood’s baffling “resurrection” confounds Scotland Yard. Coincidentally, a comely American con-artist, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), brings in a new case for Holmes to solve and, in a subplot, Watson plans to move out of Holmes’s Baker Street lair and marry his girlfriend, Mary (Kelly Reilly), of whom Holmes is inordinately resentful and jealous.
Sherlock Holmes was created in the late 19th century in a series of 56 short stories and four novels by Arthur Conan Doyle. The supersleuth is now a pop icon who, according to Guinness World Records, has been portrayed more times on film than any other.
This glib screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg, based on a story by producer Lionel Wigram and Michael Robert Johnson, assumes that the audience is already familiar with the characters and tantalizingly refers to villainous Professor Moriarty at its conclusion, as a teaser for the sequel. While transforming Homes into an action/adventure hero, director Guy Ritchie (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Revolver,” “Snatch,” “RocknRolla”) makes no effort to rein in many of the actors’ thick UK accents as they exchange often-unintelligible, rapid-fire dialogue. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Sherlock Holmes” is a slick 7. It’s elementary that some “game’s afoot.”
