Sherlock Holmes (2009)

You’ve seen the trailers, so you know there’s no deer-stalker hat and no “Elementary, dear Watson” in Guy Ritchie’s new take on Sherlock Holmes. What is in it are some solid performances (especially from Robert Downey, Jr.), some fun filmmaking tricks, a good bit of action, and a whole lot of the spirit—if not the letter—of the enduring Holmes legend. This is a Sherlock Holmes movie, all right, but not exactly like the ones before it. No one will mistake this for a BBC production.

The movie begins at the end of a case. Sherlock Holmes (Downey) and his friend, ex-military doctor John Watson (Jude Law) combine forces with Scotland Yard to nab fiendish murderer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) just as he is about to commit another ritual murder. Seems the aptly named Blackwood has a fondness for butchering virgins amid Satanic scrawls, and has had London in a paranoid religious panic (He styles himself the devil’s wrath on mankind. Or something.). Now, however, he is for the gallows. This macabre case closed, by all appearances, Holmes and Watson return to their civilian lives: Watson to pursue his engagement to Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly) and Holmes to agitated boredom as he awaits his next challenge—and laments his friend’s immanent departure from bachelorhood and Baker Street. Two things, however, arise to shake Holmes from his cabin-fever malaise. One is the appearance of Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a savvy con woman and former love-interest of Holmes who bears a couple of seductive offers of work. The second is the apparent resurrection of the executed Lord Blackwood from the dead. Since Blackwood had taunted Holmes with such a miracle after his capture, and since he was declared dead by none other than Dr. John Watson, the pair take a somewhat personal interest. Soon Holmes and Watson are embroiled in a mystery involving secret societies, illicit chemistry labs, and what looks like demonic magic. And of course, there’s the wily Ms. Adler to contend with.

Mr. Ritchie made a name for himself with a couple of kinetic crime movies set in the London underworld, and so it’s no surprise that he’s a sure hand with the seamier aspects of the story—murders, double-crosses, and politicians who say less than they mean are all in ample supply here. He also plays up the seamy side of the locale: this London is a muted, early-industrial-Gothic mud-and-brick stew—Dickens by way of Tim Burton. The plot twists and turns, sometimes ridiculously, but never cheats. We are shown everything we need to be shown, even if we—unlike Holmes—don’t realize it. This is surely a decent crime movie. But is it “Sherlock Holmes?”

Well, yes and no. The character of Sherlock Holmes is maddeningly elusive. The things we think we know about Holmes—the accessories, the stock phrases—come from later film and stage interpretations, not from Arthur Conan Doyle’s original beloved detective tales. Conan Doyle reveals little about Holmes’s dress or appearance. The detective’s appeal is in his own mysteriousness and eccentricities—and, of course, his prodigious intellectual skills. The Holmes of Ritchie’s movie has all of these, wrapped up in the rumpled charisma of Robert Downey, Jr. Downey already showed, in Iron Man, that he could play the smartest man in the room. Tony Stark, however, is a showboat. Holmes works just to please himself: because he cannot not work. With no focus, Holmes abuses substances, blows off steam in boxing matches, and engages in half-cocked experiments with anything at hand, such as guns and Watson’s bulldog (not, thankfully, at the same time). The role uses Downey’s looks to great effect, his large dark eyes always wide open, taking in everything around him, his facial tics conveying intelligence and annoyance in equal measure. His Holmes is not a contemplative man, but a compulsive one, a force of crime-solving nature. Yes, this Holmes fights a lot—but the Conan Doyle stories themselves had their fair share of fisticuffs and gunplay.

Downey is ably backed up by Jude Law’s more understated, but still dangerous, Watson. The film wisely recalls that Watson was a military doctor, a man who saw action in foreign wars, and is at least as quick with his revolver as Holmes is with his mind. Watson is Holmes’s ally. The police (story regular Inspector Lestrade makes an appearance) are Holmes’s foils. Holmes should show up the cops, not Watson, and that’s how it is here. Law strikes just the right notes: Watson is competent and sharp, but not the whirlwind Holmes is, which is as it should be. He and Downey engage in banter (much lifted wholly or in part from the stories) exactly as old friends should, with equal parts affection and exasperation. Their chemistry accounts for much of the movie’s appeal. Opposite them, Mark Strong (rapidly establishing himself in the Irons-Rickman line of creepy gentleman villains) is suitably inscrutable and menacing as the seemingly supernatural Lord Blackwood. This is a man so stylishly evil that they let him wear a black leather coat to his own execution. And as Irene Adler, Rachel McAdams at least goes smirk-for-smirk with Downey. I didn’t exactly believe the two as lovers, but they did seem to have great fun scheming together. Who knows? Maybe that’s what love is for a man like Sherlock Holmes.

The movie itself is uneven. Ritchie enlivens the first half with some nifty tricks. Holmes plans out his fights in his head before hand, explaining moves and probable consequences—a nice way of bringing sense to the inevitable post-Bourne-and-Gladiator blurs of action. He eschews expository dialogue and instead replays events after they happen, revealing how they came to happen as they did and saving Holmes some dreary speechifying. Sadly, these sorts of quirks vanish toward the end in favor of more straightforward action. The mystery is still interesting, but the movie has become less so, and that’s a bit of a letdown. One suspects that both Holmes and Ritchie are capable of more. The ultimate, uncovered plot is also probably more contemporary than Victorian, but so it often goes. To complain that this movie feels derivative in parts is a little backwards: after all, almost all our modern mystery tales are descended from Holmes. This isn’t so much a reboot of a formula as a reappropriation of it. And of course there is a set-up for a sequel or two. After all, the only one not totally satisfied when a case is closed is the restless Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes himself is, in a way, timeless. It is true that this is sort of Holmes crossed with Bond, but it’s the movie that’s modernized, not the characters. They stay rooted in their origins. As in J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek movie, there are countless little details lurking about to get a nod or a chuckle from devotees of the tradition. Downey and Law are not the definitive Holmes and Watson, but I’m not sure a definitive Holmes and Watson are any more possible than a definitive Hamlet.

Ritchie and company have created two hours of good fun with some familiar characters. It’s only because it’s the legendary “Sherlock Holmes” that we want to expect more. Is Sherlock Holmes basically a mystery-action-adventure story? Yes. But it’s a smarter than average mystery-action-adventure story—and that, after all, is what Conan Doyle wrote, back when they were just stories, and not legend.