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MovieMail's Review
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law star as the revitalised Victorian detective and his sidekick Watson, who lock horns with a mysterious new nemesis, cult leader Lord Blackwood. No deerstalkers here!
There is a long tradition of pastiches, spoofs and satires of The Great Detective, and many of the best, including The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), have offered fresh insight and kindled new interest in the most-filmed character in cinema history.
Guy Ritchie's big-budget adventure is a boisterous yet entirely plausible re-imagining, featuring red-blooded performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson. At first glance, Holmes' penchant for bare-knuckle pugilism, his fiery American lady-adversary, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), and Watson's military service in Afghanistan may seem like concessions to modern sensibilities, but fans of Conan Doyle's novels will recognise them as absolutely canonical (as is the conspicuous absence of a deerstalker).
Downey Jr. plays up the wide-eyed eccentricity, but also captures the character's loneliness and emotional reserve; his feelings for Law's dashing, well-manicured Watson may be more than strictly professional. The plot, which involves freemasonry and black magic, is pure poppycock, but Ritchie's down and dirty recreation of Victorian London is visually striking, and the sulky bromance between sleuth and sidekick is supremely entertaining.
The great Victorian detective returns in this action thriller directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr (in a Golden Globe-winning performance), Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong. Based on a new story by producer Lionel Wigram using Arthur Conan Doyle's famous characters, the film follows Sherlock Holmes and his loyal assistant Dr Watson as they deal with a mysterious new nemesis: Lord Blackwood, a cult leader and Satanist who harbours the most deadly of intentions.
Abandoning the accepted portrayals of Holmes and Watson, as perfected by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in the films of the 1930s and 40s, Downey Jr's Holmes is a modern, bohemian man of action and intellect, while Law's Watson is no longer the bumbling fool of old, but a much sharper character with an eye for the ladies and a taste for gambling.
