No lit, Sherlock

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Robert Downey Jr. ditches the deerstalker and the tweeds for his cheeky turn as famous literary sleuth (WARNER BROS.)

In a sane world, maverick moviemaker Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Rocknrolla) would be the last guy in the world to get the assignment of reinvigorating Arthur Conan Doyle's musty Victorian sleuth Sherlock Holmes for 21st-century cinema.

In past films, Ritchie demonstrated a talent for quirky kinetics, as opposed to intellectual gymnastics. Also, Ritchie's true love has always been for lads on the wrong side of the law.

Nevertheless, Ritchie makes it work in this droll, snappy rendering of a Holmes adventure benefiting from the further outrage of casting Yank actor Robert Downey Jr. as the Baker Street brainiac.

Downey's Holmes favours dark glasses and elegantly rumpled attire over tweeds and deerstalker caps. But he is as hyper-perceptive as ever, even if that tendency elicits heavy dues: He can't sit alone in a restaurant without threatening to explode from the stimulus of seemingly mundane social intercourse.

That frailty adds a shade of neediness to Holmes's relationship with his friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law), whom we find on the cusp of abandoning the wildly eccentric, antisocial detective in favour of an anchored life with a fetching fiancée (Kelly Reilly).

Fortunately, an old game is afoot. The evil cult murderer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), apprehended by Holmes and Watson, promised to return after his execution. It appears he's as good as his black word, breaking out of his crypt and terrorizing the populace of London circa 1891.

Joining in the chase for Blackwood, with an agenda all her own, is lovely American master thief Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). She's a woman who, having outsmarted Holmes on two previous occasions, gives him a chance to experience some sexual tension with someone other than Watson.

The intricate screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson and Anthony Peckham allows Ritchie the opportunity to elegantly synthesize his underworld oeuvre with Conan Doyle's, whether following Holmes and Watson stalking the industrial grunge environs of London, or cheekily deconstructing a boxing match between the sleek Holmes and a hulking bruiser.

The movie is on less solid ground in sequences requiring big visual effects and PG-friendly content -- both new challenges for a director of Ritchie's earthy/earthly talents.

If the computer-generated vistas aren't convincing, the best special effect by far is Downey, an actor who shows unprecedented versatility in his ability to play a Marvel superhero one year and a literary icon the next, with equal applications of gravity, wit and sheer cheek.

Put it this way: It's not a hard sell to present Downey as a genius.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Other Voices

Selected excerpts from reviews of Sherlock Holmes.

Downey and Law are terrific together. For me, watching them act is the movie's principal pleasure ... Downey, like Johnny Depp, has found a way of remaining hip in the most grossly frivolous and commercial projects -- a quick wiggle of the eyes, a half smile, a beat or two of silence, and he conveys that he realizes it's all nonsense. His attitude is: Yes, I know, but why not come along for the ride?

-- David Denby, New Yorker

If you can get over the idea of Sherlock Holmes as an action hero -- and if, indeed, you want to -- then there is something to enjoy about this flagrant makeover of fiction's first modern detective into a man of brawn as much as brain.

-- Todd McCarthy, Variety

Ritchie is all about the whooshing and headbanging, leaving no space between Holmes' words to savor their meaning. Downey is irresistible. The movie, not so much.

-- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Ritchie piles on the excess. It serves him well in fashioning a dazzling, detailed version of 1880s London, with the pardon-our-dust construction of the landmark Tower Bridge a pivotal element.

--David Germain, Associated Press

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Must Be Turning Over in His Grave!

-- Rex Reed, New York Observer

A handsome, entertaining romp of a film that they really should have called Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Pipes.

-- Alan Hunter, Daily Express

A fun, action-packed reintroduction to Conan Doyle's classic characters. Part Two should provide more in the way of scope.

-- Willaim Thomas, Empire magazine

Guy Ritchie's best movie, and maybe Robert Downey Jr.'s too.

--Fred Topel, Sci Fi Wire

Compiled by Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 24, 2009 D1