Sunday, January 24, 2010

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Okay, on the plus side, it is another superlative performance from Robert Downey Junior even if his english accent wavers in and out all thru the movie. He gets the semi-divine curse that is the Holmesian super intellect, quite literally his deductive stills render him remote erratic and yet hopelessly needy.
Jude Law's Doctor Watson is a sort of thwarted man of action, he enables Holmes, puts up with Holmes' bizarre personal habits mostly because the Master Detective brings him the conflict and danger he craves.
Too bad the script is so meshugginah, eee-vil aristocrat plotting the downfall of Great Britain by subverting a bunch doddering old wankers and then massacring parliament. All executed with as much verve and action as any "Lethal Weapon" sequel, and that is the core problem, Holmes is not really an action hero for all his bona fides as a crimefighter. He is a problem solver, when the crisis degenerates into a plot to gas parliament, well that is a job for Batman not Sherlock. Holmes is an intensive character, the action ought to revolve around his thought processes and his interaction with the clues and suspects.
Super-scale settings and sundry explosions and even an ultimate fighting style sequence just don't suit him.
Still I give Director Guy Ritchie credit, he veered off the outright supernatural at the last minute but the whole thing felt less like Conan Doyle and more like Scooby Doo.

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