Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is remarkably unremarkable for a Guy Ritchie film.

Gone are the interchangeable sets of heroes and villains who, equipped with impenetrable accents and conflicting motives, populate the intricately interwoven plots of Ritchie's other films to date. It feels almost as if Warner Brothers, wary of losing control of a newly minted franchise, held Ritchie back: "Now, make it cool, but easy to understand." Indeed, the plot, about a secret masonic society's attempt to take over the world with dark arts, is easily forgettable. The most innovative sequences are Holmes's occasional mental flash-forwards, which don't exactly complicate things. Holmes, unlike Snatch and Lock, Stock, will require no repeat viewings.

The plot isn't the only part of this film that is cartoonishly simple. Stylistically, it bears more resemblance to 1986's The Great Mouse Detective than to any of Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries. With his slicked-back hair and hulking great coat, Mark Strong's evil Lord Blackwood is even a dead ringer for the cartoon antagonist Professor RATigan (get it?). Although it was impressively rendered, the Victorian London geography is also about as badly bungled as it was in National Treasure 2: in a crucial scene, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) runs from Parliament to the partially constructed Tower Bridge (a good hour's walk) in a matter of seconds. For a film whose main character relies on precise details, general history is also somewhat misrepresented -- the bad guys declare that "civil war has made America weak," and yet the story is set around 30 years after Appomattox.

Nonetheless, all these are just nitpicks, and in no way detract from the enjoyment of seeing Robert Downey, Jr steal another role. He is excellent as the preternaturally perceptive and invariably scruffy eponymous hero, and effectively returns Hugh Laurie's Gregory House, MD back to his roots. Downey creates a Holmes all his own, emphasizing the mental agility, pugilist pastimes, and black moods of the famous detective, all found in Doyle's stories, but tweaked here to attract an audience indifferent to Basil Rathbone's traditional Meerschaum pipe and Deerstalker hat. Holmes's reclusiveness and genius are explored, though, without mention of his cocaine-addiction, probably to keep the PG-13 rating. Jude Law is also perfectly cast as the soon-to-be-married Dr John Watson; his dialogue with Holmes is the best, sharpest, and most well-written part of the movie, and fails only in its own relative scarcity, lost amidst the fight scenes and chase sequences.

Although the plot lumbers, it adequately throws the heroes into new and interesting situations frequently enough that we don't notice; although the style feels neutered, there are plenty of slow-motion fight scenes set to a great score by Hans Zimmer to make up for that. The performances, if under-used, are pitch-perfect. Yet, the film is still a bit of a mess. Why?

Two reasons. First, it surprisingly fails to deliver a Sherlock Holmes we can relate to. His detective work suffers for its implausibility, because the movie has set no rules for its universe, and has given us no way of keeping up, both of which make following Holmes's observations a pointless exercise. His deductions are therefore based on clues which are understandable only to him, and so the audience is forced to trail along, trusting that everything will eventually make sense after a predictable and disappointing "I'm-telling-you-things-you-already-know" scene of explanation. The perfect cast feels wasted on the poor execution of a muddled plot.

And, second, never have I been more disappointed by a trailer spoiler. We were promised a scene with Rachel McAdams in a corset, damn it!