Sherlock Holmes (2009)
DIRECTOR: Guy Ritchie
CAST:
Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong
REVIEW:
Devout followers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective novels may be appalled at what director Guy Ritchie has done with Doyle’s creation, but those with open minds may find a surprising amount of Holmesian details emerge intact, and for all others, Sherlock Holmes is a rollicking ride with plenty of action and comedy and some style and wit along the way.
Unorthodox but brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his trusty right-hand man Dr. John Watson (Jude Law) apprehend Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) just as he is about to carry out a ritualistic murder to follow the five he has already committed. Blackwood is sentenced to hang, but claims to be a powerful practitioner of black magic who will rise from his own grave, and sure enough, Blackwood’s hanging is soon followed by claims of his resurrection. Holmes scoffs at the supernatural, but finds himself hard-pressed to sniff out logical explanations for the events. Meanwhile, he is also visited by Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a woman who got away from him before in more ways than one and is also seeking Blackwood for different motives.
Guy Ritchie’s (and Robert Downey Jr.’s) version of Sherlock Holmes may be more swashbuckling than any previously seen, but many of the characteristics Doyle wrote into the original incarnation of Holmes can be found within Downey’s portrayal, albeit filtered through the movie’s action-comedy tone. The image most of us have of Holmes as an older, stiff upper-lipped British gentleman in a deerstalker’s cap actually has more to do with earlier film portrayals starring the likes of Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee than Doyle’s novels. Doyle wrote Holmes as a cocaine addict who nonetheless was a boxer, an excellent fencer, and a master of disguise who practiced martial arts, and also as an antisocial curmudgeon who was only made into a “respectable” member of society by his friendship with Dr. John Watson, who as portrayed here, was indeed a decorated soldier with a limp from combat, as opposed to the bumbling sidekick he’s often depicted as.
All that said, it goes without saying that Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is cheerfully revisionist, and many of those who enjoyed Doyle’s detective series will not be impressed by their hero being transplanted into an action-comedy. Then again, Sherlock Holmes has been played by more than 70 actors in 200 films, so there’s room for different interpretations, and Downey’s portrayal, whatever issues one might have with the movie surrounding it, is actually more faithful than it might seem at first glance.
Robert Downey Jr. added another colorful protagonist to his belt in 2009 alongside Iron Man‘s Tony Stark, and despite the film’s action-comedy tone, most of Holmes’ personality traits are represented in Downey’s portrayal. Downey is an odd duck who is hard to pin down; he’s not someone I would have thought of for Sherlock Holmes, but somehow his quirky, twitchy, frazzled, off-kilter energy seems to suit the part oddly well, and like Johnny Depp, Downey seems able to bring a wry conviction to any character no matter how ridiculous. Downey’s Holmes is ingenious, daring, resourceful, and frighteningly observant (the scenes in which Downey rattles off the wealth of information he has gleaned about a shocked dinner guest or captor from the brand of shoes they wear or the mark of chalk on their suit are among the most delightful in the movie, and also the ones that seem the most straight off the page). However, he is also irascible, curmudgeonly, and sometimes petty. He pouts like a child throwing a tantrum over Watson’s plans to move out of the cramped apartment they share and into a new home with his fiancée (Kelly Reilly), and resorts to manipulative methods to try to thwart this development. In his free time, when he’s not crawling drunkenly across the floor, he’s testing anesthetics on Watson’s dog or making bugs fly in counterclockwise circles by playing certain notes on a violin. But he’s also lithe and fit, approaching hand-to-hand combat with intellectual detachment, premeditating and calculating each blow to physically incapacitate his opponent. And although Jude Law isn’t given as juicy a character to chew on, he’s a worthy co-star, elevating Watson from the bumbling sidekick to a capable, reliable partner whose loyalty to Holmes always wins out, even when he’s exasperated by Holmes’ erratic habits and general obnoxiousness. And, in another pleasant surprise, Downey and Law have terrific “buddy movie” chemistry, almost on the level of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover’s great rapport in the Lethal Weapon series. Their relationship, and the way they play off each other (often bickering like an old married couple), makes the movie; were Downey’s Holmes and Law’s Watson not such a delightful screen duo, Sherlock Holmes would be a much less entertaining movie.
No one beyond Downey and Law makes much of an impression. Mark Strong provides a little menace as Blackwood, but scant screentime and going out with a bit of a whimper leaves him a rather ho-hum villain. Also, while the inclusion of Irene Adler makes sense given her prominence in Holmes-related literature (although she only appeared in one story by Doyle himself), the character feels like a superfluous and underutilized addition to the plot, and Rachel McAdams seems a little out-of-place. Irene requires something of the femme fatale that McAdams doesn’t have. There are smaller roles for Kelly Reilly (as Watson’s fiancee), Eddie Marsan (as the clueless police chief Inspector Lestrade), and Hans Matheson (as an accomplice of Blackwood), but the only characters who really matter are Holmes and Watson. A second treat for fans of the books is the presence (sort of) of Professor Moriarty, considered Holmes’ arch nemesis in Doyle’s stories, as a shadowy, unseen background figure with promise to become a more prominent adversary in following installments.
Guy Ritchie brings a healthy helping of style, taking us through a gloomy 1890s London where buildings loom ominously overhead, the kind of London where it’s easy to imagine Jack the Ripper stalking the streets. He has a similarly energetic style with the various fight scenes, including the first couple of Holmes’ fights, first shown in slow motion as we hear Holmes’ mental plan of methodical attack, and then repeated in real time, and Holmes being chased by a hulking Frenchman through a shipyard that ends in a watery catastrophe. Along the way, Downey and Law keep things buoyant with snappy dialogue and Downey being his engaging oddball self (as with Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes would have lost something, maybe a lot, without Downey). There’s also a few playfully flirtatious encounters with Holmes and Irene, a little suspense in a slaughterhouse, and a climactic swordfight on the under-construction London Bridge.
Sherlock Holmes isn’t perfect, but open-minded Holmes fans will find much of Holmes’ spirit remains intact, with the movie retaining forgotten details of Doyle’s writings even as it updates for modern audiences, and for everyone else it’s an entertaining two hours that doesn’t require you to check your brain at the door. It’s possible to see Downey’s Holmes continuing in a franchise as his Tony Stark has done with Iron Man (a second Holmes installment is already planned), and if done properly, squaring Holmes and Watson off against Professor Moriarty could bump the sequel up to another level (Moriarty is to Holmes as The Joker is to Batman or Lex Luthor is to Superman). In the meantime, this film mostly succeeds at both an updated action-comedy and a nod to its page origins, and an entertaining ride.
***