There are no deerstalker hats or curved calabash pipes to be seen in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. Never once does the famous detective say, “elementary, my dear Watson.” He does however reveal himself to be a formidable martial artist, as adept with his hands and feet as he is with a stick and a gun, and able to take part in a brutal bout of bare-knuckle boxing.
This may shock people whose notion of Sherlock Holmes is formed by big- and small-screen versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective.But far from being a travesty, it actually represents a radical return to the original stories. As any Sherlockian purist will tell you, Conan Doyle’s Holmes was indeed a formidable boxer and a skilled practitioner of various martial arts.
Moreover, there is no mention of a deerstalker in the original books, nor any dialogue in which Holmes uses the “elementary” phrase made so famous by the 14 films and 200 odd radio plays starring Basil Rathbone as the detective and Nigel Bruce as his bumbling sidekick.
Indeed, for all its explosions and its silly, James Bond-ish plot, Ritchie’s attempt to create a new Sherlock Holmes is in some ways radically and bravely faithful to the Conan Doyle original. For instance, Holmes as played here by Robert Downey Jr is much more of a bohemian than previous incarnations — dressed like an actor or artist and constantly disheveled. And for all its contemporary noise, bombast and emphasis on violent action, the film is also surprisingly insightful in its depiction of late Victorian London.
However, this notoriously troubled production (Warner Bros apparently ordered weeks of reshoots, and scenes from the trailer are not in the final cut) does fail to capture the essence and appeal of the Sherlock Holmes character in a fundamental way. Ritchie’s hapless team of screenwriters are, among other failings, unable to evoke the deductive powers that make Holmes such a brilliant detective.
Ritchie's gimmicks are getting more than a little tired
Unfortunately the writers — Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, Lionel Wigram and Simon Kinberg — also seem to have been under differing instructions as to the genre of film they were writing. The film cannot seem to make up its mind whether it is an action-adventure blockbuster, a mystery, a comedy, a period piece or a spoof. It is a shame because you can often glimpse what a triumph it might have been. Instead it is a baggy, fitfully amusing misfire, overreliant on special effects and laden with clunky dialogue.
However, the casting of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law — much criticised in advance — does turn out to be an inspired choice. (The fact that their bickering and banter comes across as witless and clumsy is not the actors’ fault). Downey is incapable of a bad or uninteresting performance. Moreover, with the humility that US actors often bring to British roles, he has clearly worked hard to get the details right, including a convincing accent.
Sadly the same cannot be said for Law, who out of laziness or lack of the relevant training, is content to give Watson his own, very contemporary “mockney” accent. This not only does not sound in the least like the clipped accent a smart ex-Indian Army doctor would have had in that era, and it also contrasts strongly and unsettlingly with Holmes’s speech and the speech of all the other upper- and upper-middle class characters in the film.
This is a shame, because so many other aspects of Law’s Watson are so right. Watson should be tough and capable with a streak of ruthless practicality and an eye for pretty girls. After all, that is how he is in the Conan Doyle stories — it is only the movie tradition that makes Watson a comic foil.
The “real” Watson had been wounded in action at Maiwand during the second Afghan war, before coming to share Holmes’s messy Baker Street digs, and Law effortlessly comes across as an appropriately intelligent and hard man, both adoring of and exasperated by Holmes.
In the new story concocted by Ritchie’s writing team, Holmes’s primary antagonist is a Bond-style supervillain called Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) who practices black magic, murders beautiful girls and plans to take over the world.
Among his goons is an unconquerable giant — a version of the Jaws character from The Spy Who Loved Me and other James Bond films, but with a French accent .
Holmes also has to deal with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams from State of Play), a beautiful, resourceful international criminal with whom he once had some kind of affair. (Though it is made clear that Holmes has been in love with her, Ritchie does not modernise the characters in the BBC/Andrew Davies way by showing them have sex. Indeed he is even shy of showing Holmes’s drug addiction.)
There is also Inspector Lestrade, played by Eddie Marsan, the fine English actor, best known for his performances in Mike Leigh films like Happy-Go-Lucky.
One of the other things that make the film’s failings all the more frustrating is that Ritchie has a much better sense of Victorian realities than most contemporary filmmakers. It has become de rigeur — indeed, a cinema cliché — to depict poverty and grime and sexual depravity in Victorian London. But Ritchie also gets the extraordinary energy and ebulliance of the city in the late-19th century, its global reach as the heart of a still-growing and confident empire. He understands and celebrates that culture’s profound and productive fascination with engineering and science, and the thirst for knowledge of all kinds that Holmes himself exemplifies.
Unfortunately Ritchie’s cinematic tics and gimmicks are getting more than a little tired, especially his swooping camera and the repetition in slow motion for no good reason of crunching blows in the bare knuckle fight scene.
At least there is no indulgence in vapid mysticism — Kabbalah only makes an appearance obliquely in that an elite Masonic-style cult encountered by Holmes is obsessed with a book written in Hebrew.
