There have been so many Sherlock Holmes adaptations in movies and TV that another bad one won’t ruin the day of even the most serious devotee of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories.
Still, Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” comes close. The overhaul of an icon begins with a quick, snarky American actor taking over the role of the world’s most cerebral sleuth.
That would be Robert Downey Jr. as the great Sherlock. The detective begins the film depressed: He’s between cases and his agile mind needs stimulation.
As Downey’s coy performance makes clear, he’s also petulant about losing his partner, Dr. Watson (Jude Law), to a female (Kelly Reilly). As Downey has been hinting in interviews about the film, there’s more than a smidgen of gay subtext in the story of two longtime bachelors who live and work together.
Bringing that to the surface seems as irrelevant as the movie’s other decisions, such as having Holmes be a bare-knuckle participant in a Victorian-era Fight Club or slowing down the action at times so we can hear Holmes forecasting the best way to physically disable his opponent.
There’s a plot. The evil Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) is running a sort of Hellfire Club in London, trying to scare the populace with a variety of occult tricks.
A mystery woman, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), returns to Holmes’ life after an absence. She’s apparently in the employ of a shadowy figure who might just be — but no, let’s not even speak the name here.
The effects and the attitude (and the pointlessly bleached color photography) overwhelm the brainy-deductive appeal of the usual Sherlock Holmes story. Which is really kind of missing the point of the usual Sherlock Holmes story.
Jude Law doesn’t make much of an impression, playing second fiddle to Downey’s fussy take on Holmes. Ritchie has given Downey a great deal of latitude in goosing certain lines in a certain way, which I guess is what you do when you hire Robert Downey Jr.
And at times Downey is funny, and at times the action (particularly a sequence with bombs detonating within a few feet of our heroes) is eye-filling, in the manner of an impressive TV commercial.
What it has to do with Sherlock Holmes, I don’t know. The application of Ritchie’s contemporary style (last seen in “RocknRolla”) to a classic smells like an attempt to launch a new movie franchise. Sure enough, there’s a nod toward a sequel. I’ll believe it when I see it, and maybe not even then.
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