Sherlock Holmes

Rating:**

First things first. If you come to this film hoping to re-acquaint yourself with the familiar figure of Sherlock Holmes,all deersucker cap and pipe,you are in for a rude jolt. Guy Ritchie wades into that image,created by celebrated author Arthur Conan Doyle,and overlays it with his Holmes,more scruffy than stately,brawn as much in evidence as brain.

Ever imagined Holmes in a ring,getting battered by a heavy-set opponent? In one of the most entertaining scenes in the film,Robert Downey Jr,who makes a splendid latter-day Sherlock,makes a meal of the fellow by executing a lightning calculation of his weak spots. Unfortunately,the rest of the story doesn’t quite match up to this virtuoso knock-out : it takes a long time to really get going,and when it does,it is a strange combination of a power-mad villain who rises from the dead,mysterious killings,occult,black magic,and a bad girl ( McAdams) who can be good,if she’s given a chance.

We are not revealing anything more. Suffice it to say that this is a Holmes who,like any other standard-issue superhero is about to save the world ( in those days,presumably,London was the centre of the universe) from being taken over by a man who believes in human sacrifice. Huh? Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned mysteries that the Holmes of the stories and the TV series solved? We get women wriggling on a stone slab in an underground chamber,waiting for the knife to descend,dead animals in a charnel house,and clues being solved at rapid-fire speed in a mystery that takes well over two hours to unravel. We also get some spectacular action which feels wonderfully real : there’s been too much CGI in the past few months.

Casting Robert Downey Jr as the infallible sleuth is a master-stroke : the staid Holmes of the books and the TV series,turns cool. But Jude Law as the faithful Watson is an uncharacteristically subdued act. And McAdams is left sadly unused. Mark Strong tries hard,but gets stymied by the improbable plot twists he’s entangled in. RD Jr’s only real competitor is the city of London,which has rarely looked as magnificent,with its horse-drawn carriages and sooty warehouses.

Watch it,by all means,for a dazzling visual feast,but be warned,this Sherlock is more show than tell.