Sherlock Holmes

Editorial

Robert Downey Jr’s name was once a byword for squandered ability. Now it means action, laughs, capers, fun. The facts of his comeback have been long-detailed, and Jon Favreau deserves credit for seeing that this mercurial talent could be harnessed in a wham-bam family tentpole even as he approached middle age. But still, it’s quite another leap to imagine the rat-tat-tat New Yorker as Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic deducer. Kudos too, then, to Guy Ritchie, who imagined him in the role.

And what have Downey Jr and Ritchie, these unlikely compadres, set in motion? Well, for all their talk pre-release of Butch and Sundance and Raiders, the movie Sherlock Holmes most immediately echoes is Bryan Singer’s first foray into the world of the X-Men.

There is, undoubtedly, much to love in the Redford/Newman dynamic so lovingly, endearingly aped by Downey Jr and Law. It’s a relationship both entertaining and convincing, and even survives the occasional bits featuring a farty comedy dog.

The action, meanwhile, though not on a par with the escapades of Indy, largely delivers, from the Raiders-style pre-credits chase in which our heroes first meet their nemesis, Lord Blackwood, through Holmes’s bare-chested sparring in the local fleapits and to a climactic second-act showdown on the docks, all slo-mo explosions and high drama.

Ultimately, though, as with Singer’s reintroduction of a new generation of long-established characters, this first visit to Baker Street is more successful as a set-up to its sequels than a satisfying story on its own terms. Just as Singer really flew in X-Men 2, so too should Ritchie do better with Sherlock’s return, delivering on the promise of the Holmes-Moriarty face-off and taking his heroes on a more globetrotting mission.

The support cast enjoy mixed success. Strong is as reliably redoubtable as ever as the evil Lord Blackwood, and the always brilliant Eddie Marsan is a great target for gags as a bumbling copper. A very game Rachel McAdams, though, as the duplicitous but charming Irene Adler, is fatally edited down to the point that her backstory, a mysterious previous relationship with Holmes that could have provided much intrigue, is merely hinted at, discarded presumably in pursuit of a running time not up there with The Return Of The King.

Given the smarts of its hero, not to mention the usual breakneck pacing of its director, it’s ironic how plodding the plot can feel. When he’s directing something he’s written, Ritchie can go too far the other way, juggling so many subplots it’s hard to keep up. Here the story is too simplistic, needing little in the way of detective skills to figure out. 

Still, the real relationship is between Holmes and Watson, and this is where Sherlock really finds its home: as a lightweight, capricious buddy picture. The film gives you the chance to appreciate Jude Law’s screen skills. He delivers charm, vim and matinee idol verve, making for a more muscular Watson than earlier incarnations and providing a welcome straight-man when Holmes’s eccentricities occasionally become too much. Here’s to seeing he and Downey Jr embark on a more exotic adventure next time out.

William Thomas