Director Guy Ritchie wants to give us a different Sherlock Holmes than we may be thinking of. The director of high-octane films like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch wants to present the legendary detective from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books as an action hero – the kind of hero you’d find at the center of any Ritchie movie.
How could the detective in the cap, smoking the pipe and wearing the long coat be an action hero? Wouldn’t the coat get in the way? Ritchie is relying on what he says is the Holmes of Doyle’s stories, not the iconic image that your mind might jump to when you think of Holmes. Doyle wrote Holmes to be good at anything he attempted thanks to his brilliant mind. He’s not just a master of deduction – he’s a gifted musician, an astute scientist, and a kick-ass martial artist. He has mastered anatomy and physics. He knows just the right places to hit a man (and in what order) to bring him down and win the fight. He was a precursor to Batman.
Playing this old London Batman is Iron Man himself, Robert Downey, Jr. Downey continues his career roll, and arguably, he’s why people are going to want to see Sherlock Holmes. Audiences en masse aren’t looking at old pictures of Basil Rathbone and his pipe thinking an update of that will be cool. And modern audiences may not be all that into mysteries set in London in the 1800s. They want the right star to guide them through the update. Downey is to Sherlock Holmes what Johnny Depp is to Pirates of the Caribbean – the right guy to guide a hard sell but good idea to the masses.
And by Jove, the old chap pulls it off strikingly. When we like Downey (as we did in Iron Man), he’s a bit of a cad but also charming, witty and self-effacing. He brings all that to Holmes and throws in a convincing English accent while he’s at it. He’s buff, but not enough to make you think he can clean everyone’s clock. He’s going to have to use his mind.
Ritchie slows the action down enough to let us hear Holmes think – and then he strikes, throwing punches that hit as hard as they do in any other Ritchie film. It’s modern special effects fighting set in old England – and it works. The same is true when things blow up: the explosions are way cool, but you never think it’s overdone on special effects. It’s Sherlock Holmes, not The Matrix.
It is a bit close to other modern movies though – your cop/buddy movies. The mystery is secondary to Holmes’ relationship with his colleague and best friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law). There is back-and-forth arguing between the two the entire time as they try to solve crime, but it’s an affectionate teasing and sniping. Law, with his actual British accent, is a worthy sparring partner for Downey. Downey and Law aren’t just channeling Holmes and Watson; they’re throwing in some Murtaugh & Riggs from Lethal Weapon. Rachel McAdams is thrown in as love interest, but her story and character aren’t all that central to the movie. She may be there just so the bromance between Holmes and Watson isn’t misinterpreted.
Surprisingly, the central mystery in Sherlock Holmes isn’t all that interesting. An occultist has set up a plot to take over England (wow, this is very Batman), and it’s up to Holmes and Watson to stop him. There is no whodunit. We know whodunit. Holmes and Watson instead spend the movie trying to figure out how-he-dunit. It’s a series of little mysteries that aren’t there to drive the plot but to show us how smart Holmes is.
They did that because they want there to be more Holmes movies and they need us to like him. It’s easy to deduce there will be more. It ends with as blatant a tease as the one in Downey’s Iron Man. Downey may now have two super heroes in his repertoire.