etc.) It’s kind of like Lethal Weapon with waistcoats and pocket watches, but the easy way Downey and Law relate to each other, tossing old nicknames like jabs (“old cock,” “mother hen”) and continually bailing one another out of danger, makes it all worthwhile. By the time the inevitable sequel setup rolls around at the end, you probably won’t be doing cartwheels to see Downey and Jude Law spring back into action as Holmes and Watson, but if you’re anything like me, you won’t be turned off by the prospect, either - and in this sequel-crazy day and age, that might be all we can reasonably expect.ĭowney and Law are fun to watch here, injecting layers of chemistry beneath the screenplay’s rather tired outline of their relationship (Watson is getting married and breaking up their partnership Holmes wants him to stay but won’t say it, etc. If it’s familiar, though, that’s because it’s what Downey does best, and whatever Holmes‘ flaws, it illustrates that this is a perfect role for him. You’ve seen him do this shtick before - perpetually rumpled, wild-haired, yet irresistibly charming always getting himself into seemingly impossible fixes, only to emerge unruffled and mostly unscathed. ![]() Ritchie’s Sherlock is a hybrid - half intoxicating period flick, half wisecracking buddy action thriller - and even though the elements don’t always cobble together convincingly, it should still provide a couple hours of decent kicks for anyone who isn’t obsessive about the books.ĭowney is appealingly bug-eyed here, offering yet another variation on the chatterbox character directors have been asking him to deliver since The Pick-Up Artist. If it errs a little too far on the side of modern filmmaking trends - such as the annoying speedups, slowdowns, and whooshing, clunking sound effects that plague so many action movies these days - it also does Holmes a solid by breaking him out of the stuffy mold he’d been trapped in for decades. It’s a fun mess, though, and even if many members of the global network of crazy Holmes fanatics hated Sherlock Holmes, it essentially does what it’s supposed to do, which is make the detective appealing to a new audience. tends to bring to his big paycheck gigs, odds were high that Holmes would be a loud, special effects-laden mess.Īnd it is. In other words, no one had any reason to expect Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes to be a sensitive, sensible return to the big screen for Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective - between Ritchie’s trademark lack of subtlety as a filmmaker and the itchy, frenetic acting style Robert Downey, Jr. Hollywood is forever trying to update stuff, and the results are almost always painful, either because the source material isn’t worth revisiting (hello, Karate Kid remake and CG-coated Alvin and the Chipmunks) or because the new versions are self-consciously “modern” in ways that alienate fans of the originals.
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