Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Eccentric consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson battle to bring down a new nemesis and unravel a deadly plot that could destroy England.
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What critics say influenced Sherlock Holmes
The conflicted genius is a keen boxer who battles in “Fight Club”-like matches but also adores the opera.As in all Holmes tales, the case to be solved is the thing and init is complicated business, fashioned by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg from Johnson and Lionel Wigram’s screen story.
His Holmes combines the qualities of a highly cerebral and neurotic sleuth like Monk with the derring-do and masochistic physicality of an urban brawler in Fight Club .
I don’t know how well this film would have worked were it not for Robert Downey Jr. in the role – but with him in it, we have in this movie one of the most interesting characters I’ve seen on screen since Brad Pitt played Tyler Durden in Fight Club.
When not slumming in the streets, he’s duking it out in the squalid East End as a bare-chested combatant in scenes resembling outtakes from “Fight Club.”
The plot is perfervid hokum pumped up to justify the movie’s portentous look, and, for extra juice, it has squeezed pop elements from martial-arts movies, “Fight Club,” and “The Da Vinci Code.”
Moreover, when Rathbone and Bruce moved into modern times to fight the Nazis in 1942 with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, Holmes starts to put on his deerstalker only to have Watson remind him, “Holmes, you promised,” whereupon Sherlock opts for a nice fedora—not unlike the one Downey affects in the new film.
It is just a passing reference though and the darker themes linking to the paranormal (most famously tackled by Doyle in The Hound Of The Baskervilles) are heavily glossed over as well.
After all, there’s a reason why The Hound of the Baskervilles with its legendary hound from hell is the most filmed of all Holmes stories.
While it might not be a classic on par with such earlier Holmes film adventures as either the 1939 or 1959 versions of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" or the well-regarded British television starring Jeremy Brett, it's very enjoyable.
I liked what Peter Cushing did with the part in the Hammer films version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and even enjoyed Christopher Plummer's slightly more emotional Holmes in Bob Clark's underrated Murder By Decree.
With Robert Downey Jr. headlining as an equally brainy and physical Holmes, director Guy Ritchie has made an up-to-date movie without letting anything newfangled overwhelm Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved characters or the yarn -- which, it must be said, has as much in common with Dan Brown's latest potboiler The Lost Symbol than, say, The Hound of the Baskervilles .
The camaraderie between Holmes and Watson will remind you of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Holmes’ deductive clue processing is depicted in jarring, quick-cut, “CSI”-style flashbacks of things he’s seen, assimilated and filed away in his head.
They might even survive British gangster film director Guy Ritchie's effort to graft action-film architecture, digital effects and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" camaraderie onto their legacy.
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Last year super-producer Joel Silver mounted an abortive attempt to revive the blockbuster Lethal Weapon franchise and though the project quickly fell apart after star Mel Gibson passed on the idea Silver’s yen for a new Buddy Cop franchise persisted.
Essentially, this is Lethal Weapon in ye olde worlde London, which will surely have the purists up in arms, but as buddy flicks go, it's a welcome twist.
Some critics are savaging Nancy Meyers' "It's Complicated" for being wealth porn in an era of economic downturn, but that hardly seems fair -- would you have denied Depression-era audiences such love-among-the-mega-rich spectacles as "Midnight" (1939) or "My Man Godfrey" (1936)?
Some critics are savaging Nancy Meyers' "It's Complicated" for being wealth porn in an era of economic downturn, but that hardly seems fair -- would you have denied Depression-era audiences such love-among-the-mega-rich spectacles as "Midnight" (1939) or "My Man Godfrey" (1936)?
There is a mystery to unravel, but Ritchie focuses more on action and adventure—not as big a stretch as you might think, as Watson makes references early in the first Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” to Holmes being a boxer and expert swordsman.
Fittingly, both fictional man and factual monster appeared in their own variations in A Study in Scarlet, and both turned out to be equally adept at selling periodicals while gaining permanent positions in popular culture.
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Even the laborious dispatching of Mark Strong's inevitably broody master-baddie has to be followed by a compulsory (but nakedly sequel-preparing) dialogue between Downey and McAdams, who even more than ever is caught looking antsy and incapable, like Julia Roberts did in Hook.
As opposed to the bumbler of previous film versions, Watson's been made into a handsome man of action, but he's also been placed in a relationship with Holmes that feels too much like "The Odd Couple."