Sherlock Holmes

Alright, all of you folks who have been complaining about a lack of originality from James Cameron’s blockbuster, Avatar, pay attention. The world’s most famous consulting detective is here in a new incarnation that is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Yet, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes remains faithful to the source material, both in characterization and in content. The final product is a fresh, exciting take on a character most contemporary audiences might have otherwise viewed as stodgy and boring.

In the hands of Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes is a deeply flawed character. The master detective is still on top of his game, solving crimes through careful deduction and heightened perception, although Holmes quickly gives the sense of a character that is bored with the world around him. He is capable of seeing so much that other people miss or take for granted, that Holmes is truly separated from the normal world. This explains Holmes’s substance abuse - a classic element of the character, justified through a new rationale.

Alongside Holmes is his faithful partner, Dr. Watson (Jude Law), although their relationship has reached a dividing point. Watson has found love and is moving to his own practice, separate from Holmes. The stress this puts on the two friends, particularly the damaged sensitivities of Holmes, creates a new dynamic between the partners. Truly, this is a friendship true to today’s “bromance” style stories, but instead of feeling like a forced adaptation of the classic duo, it feels like a movie that just explores the relationship between the two a little deeper than previous incarnations.

The splitting of Holmes and Watson takes center stage as the movie revolves around the pair’s last case. In the film’s opening scene shows the capture of Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a practitioner of black magic. Watson serves as the attending physician at Blackwood’s execution, but when the Lord appears to have come back from the dead, Holmes feels he must continue his investigation into the case in order to clear Watson’s good name, while dealing with a feeling of betrayal as his friend moves on in his own life.

Holmes gets his own love interest with the return of Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a con artist who has a mixed past with Holmes. Adler’s part in the movie is a bit extraneous, feeling tacked on more for the purpose of building towards a sequel than really serving a purpose within this story. The character’s weakness is compounded by the fact that McAdams is a really poor casting choice. While there is no denying McAdams’s skill as an actor, she doesn’t make a convincing, world-traveling, con-woman. Adler, as described in the movie, is more of a black widow figure who has broken Holmes’s heart twice, but McAdams’s portrayal feels far removed from the character we are told about.

Guy Ritchie’s stylized approach to Victorian England is a wondrous thing. The world of Holmes and Watson is gritty and grimy, on the cusp of the industrial revolution. It’s a world that is in constant motion, yet Ritchie makes sure nothing gets lost in his desire to create a non-stop world. While the action sequences use the high-speed style I’m usually not a fan of, I have to commend Ritchie for using it sparingly enough that it achieves the controlled chaotic feel the director is clearly going for. The result adds a polish to the portrayal of a Sherlock Holmes that is true to Arthur Conan Doyle’s original creation, but portrayed with a new grit we haven’ seen before.

I don’t envy the task Ritchie took on with tackling the world’s most famous detective in the era of an abundance of forensic television, some of which is even based on Holmes (Monk and House come immediately to mind). As Holmes is such a brilliant detective, the audience won’t be picking up on clues others have overlooked, which takes away from the movie a little bit. As an audience, we require an explanation by Holmes to piece everything together for the movie’s conclusion. This makes the movie less of a mystery story. Thankfully, Ritchie paints an engaging drama centered around an intriguingly flawed character that makes Sherlock Holmes a fresh, enjoyable story.

- Rafe Telsch