Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes
Starring Robert Downey Jr
Jude Law

General Overview
Being a Sherlock Holmes fan myself, and being in the process of reading the original books and short stories, I was intrigued and excited to view this film. Many have been claiming that this is not Sherlock Holmes, but just some Hollywood action hero, and that the qualities of Holmes was eradicated in this new interpretation of the classic detective. I however, believe that this movie is a far closer interpretation of the stories then most other Sherlock Holmes movies to date. The only exception would perhaps be the 1984 series "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes.

Acting
RDJ is one who seems to be creeping up onto the radar as a known yet not huge actor. In these past few years, I have seen his performances, and no matter what role he seems to play, he always pulls it off to a tee. Sherlock Holmes was no exception. He pulled off the cold and seemingly heartless detective quite well, and had the energy and bombasity that he appears to have in the written stories. He pulled off the clever detective quite well, though my only concern with this version of the character (this could be due in part to the writing) is that Sherlock Holmes is too emotional in this film. He seems to have emotional thoughts rather then cold and analytical thoughts. For instance the scene in which Holmes analyzes Mary, causing her and Watson to leave, it then shows Holmes fighting in a match against another character. The scene in and of itself is very cool, but the order in which it happens makes it appear as if Holmes is trying to reconcile with his emotions, in the fact that he feels bad/guilty that he hurt Mary, therefore he goes out to relieve his emotions by fighting. Now Holmes isn' really seen using his drugs in this movie, which some could argue were the same type of release as the fighting match, however, Holmes only ever takes his drugs when he isn't working on a case and when his mind isn't solving a problem.

Jude Law is quite literally Watson. He makes a terrific companion and pulls off a pissed off, yet friendly character towards Holmes. Despite all his annoyances with Holmes, after all the things Holmes has done to Watson, he his still faithful and loyal to Holmes. Jude Law also made Watson more independent and more intelligent then the other incarnations of Watson. He was able to utilize his combat skills from being in the Afghanistan wars on villains he and Holmes encountered, yet kept his dignity and title as a doctor. Jude Law also does a great job of pulling off a bit of the comic relief, yet remains an important and serious character, instead of being just the silly comic relief in which th audience can see through.

Overall, the other acting was for the most part superb. One qualm I have which is similar to another review I read on the matter, is Rachel McAdams does a great job acting, but does two types of characters instead of just one. Sometimes she is a take charge, not afraid of danger, and other times she is just a damsel in distress. It would have been nicer to see consistency in the performance of Irene Adler, and make her more of the take charge type, as she was the only woman to have ever outwitted Holmes.

One character who doesn't get as much spotlight as one might have hoped was Mark Strong, the main villain for the movie. He is only seen in a few scenes in the film, but his acting job is superb as the dark arts criminal using science to trick the other people. He made a very clever villain, worthy of Holmes, yet he seems to not b the focus for the better 3/4 of the film.

Cinematography
A fairly generic style of shooting throughout some of the film, but others was quite well. There were definite moments when they played with camera angles and shot layouts and most of them were really well done. Some of these experimental shots however make on villain look very goofy as he is running, and makes him seem like a midget instead of the 61/2 foot tall man he is. The shots of London were absolutely breath-taking, and it looked as if they had shot it in the 1800s. My favourite scenes were on the bridge near the final fight of the film, where the director and cinematographers made Holmes and Blackwood fighting, the focus, yet kept this awesome hugeness of London in the background as the storm approaches. It was very cool to see on the big screen.

The Story
Though not on of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, it did feel like a hollywood-ized Sherlock Holmes. The style was amped up a bit and it suited Sherlock Holmes. Everything from the fighting scenes were Holmes pre-fights in his head to the parts were Holmes figure out the crime, it followed the same general pattern of one of Conan Doyle's stories. Overall it is a solid story, that is similar to the Hounds of the Baskervilles, where it appears to be a superstitious story, dealing with the dark arts, but is in fact just science and trickery. It was nice to see a new Holmes story instead of them just doing another re-make of one of the original stories. The introduction of Moriarty and the threat of his impending presence left me very excited to see the next film.

Conclusion
A very good movie indeed, managed to play up both the original style story, while making it larger and more Hollywood like. Very few films are able to pull that off, as they are eaten up by the monster known as Hollywood, so this film had a nice balance of the action, wit, characters and story which made for a very entertaining movie.

8/10

Nice review!

I heard this was good, but I haven't seen it yet.

I'll probably rent it.

nice, i've been dying to see this film since i saw the trailer a few months ago, but if a i watch it in cinema ill end up watching it again on dvd so ill wait

it' one of those movies that you won't be missing something if you don't see it in cinemas, except [erhaps the really cool bridge shot, very big, but other then that. And I don't know how watching it again on DVD is an excuse not to see it, I've watched it in cinemas and I'll watch it again on DVD, but yeah, it's a cool film