Sherlock Holmes Review

While this is not the first film adaptation of the classic character, this film doesn't quite seem to be what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have imagined his works to be like.

The films starts as Sherlock Holmes(Robert Downey Jr.) and his trusted partner, Dr. John Watson(Jude Law) are in the final steps of rescueing a girl who's about to be killed in some ritual sacrifice, and also arrest one Lord Henry Blackwood(Mark Strong), who is later executed for practice of black magic. During this time, we see that Holmes is a rather proficient fighter and can tell a lot about a person just by looking at them(though he has no sense of tact), and has some strange habits like shooting the wall of his study when he's bored. He is soon approached by an apparent old flame, Irene Adler(Rachel McAdams), who comes to him with only a letter, which he and Watson later find to be a case for a missing person, Luke Reordan, whom Holmes insensitively refers to as a "ginger midget". Not long after, Holmes is called up to be told that Lord Blackwood has risen from the grave, and also discovers the dead body of Reordan at the cemetery where Blackwood was buried. And so, Sherlock Holmes is on the case. The duo get into several fights along the way, as well as many sticky situations, Holmes always pulls through. In the meantime, Lord Blackwood two more deaths occur, though we see that both of these are casued by Blackwood. The first is his own father, Sir Thomas, who drowns in his own bathtub, and the other is an American ambassodor or something of the like who instantaneously combusts when he is shot by Blackwood. Soon after one incident in which Irene is captured, and Holmes and Watson free her from a meat processing factory that explodes soon after they escape, she meets with a mysterious man who hired her to manipulate Holmes' affections for her. Nearing the climax, Holmes puts the pieces together and concludes that Blackwood plans to kill the members of Parliament, so Watson, Irene, and he stage a daring operation to sneak into the parliament building, where we get more action scenes, leading up to the climactic battle between Holmes and Lord Blackwood, ending with Blackwood truly dead hanging by the neck from metal chains over the river Thames. So in the end, Holmes wraps up how Blackwood survived his initial hanging and we discover the identity of Irene's previously unknown benefactor, setting up for a sequel.

I actually have mixed feeling on this movie, and I'll get the bad points out of the way first.

The films plot was confusing and hard to follow, and I feel the beginning could have used a narrator, and keep in mind, I saw this movie just today, but I didn't get into too much detail because I couldn't remeber a lot of it. This leads to why I couldn't remember a lot besides the first reason: aside from some of the action scenes, the film was rather boring. Robert Downey Jr. may get down the British accent pretty darn well, but the amount of emotion he puts into the character pales in comparison to Jude Law's Watson. The plot of having Holmes go after something equivalent to a Satanist really didn't interest me, and my mind would wander off while watching. The villain was portrayed well enough, but I didn't get much of an impression of him, since we didn't learn much about his motives aside from wanting to peform some sort of ritual, though I probably missed that if it was there. Another problem, and this one really does matter, is the was Sherlock Holmes was written. Everyone knows he was an amazing detective, but this Holmes seemed too perfect. During a couple of his early fights, he would actually do a play-by-play of how he'd hit his opponent and what effect it would have on the opponent, and both times went perfectly. Not only that, but besides his ability to deduct just about everything about a person just by looking at them, whenever there were clues lain about, he would solve them in a few seconds, give or take a minute or two, and that got to me. The movie just made him seem too good, and it seems like the movie would have been a lot shorter if not for the fights and other action sequences.

With mention of that, I can now segue into the good parts that kept it from being awful. The first being the action. The fights were all well choreagraphed with bits of humor thrown in, and you could see how much of an effect the fights had, even when Holmes didn't give a rundown. The action and special effects made for a lot of exciting and dramatic chases, escapes, and other such things. Also, while I did criticize Holmes for figuring things out too fast, he would do it cleverly and with humor to make it somewhat enjoyable, and he managed to leave no plot threads lying around. The story was well thought out, even if the subject wasn't my cup of tea, and it was somewhat amusing seeing Holmes explain to Blackwood how he figured out his scheme while Blackwood was being dragged down by a beam on a rope that had been caught on his leg.

The DVD was rather disappointing since it was even less then barebones, only having the options to play the movie and go to the language/subtitles menu, without even a scene select menu. Overall, while the movie had a lot of things that either made it boring and tried to get to the action as fast as it could, said action did save the movie from being downright awful. Personally, I hope the planned sequel makes up for the shortcomings of this film, and if you really liked it, buy it, but if you're only mildly interested like I was, just rent it.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars