Robert Downey Jr. is Sherlock Holmes this go-round, keeping London safe through hand-to-hand combat skills, a week’s worth of stubble and, of course, his dazzling powers of deduction. Show him the lint from your pocket and he’ll tell you where you went to school. Show him the soles of your shoes and he’ll tell you where you work, what you drink with your breakfast, who gave you your first kiss, when you received it and how you felt about it. In other words, he’s an insufferable show off. Movie audiences barely have a chance to sit down before he corrals his first criminal.

Aided by friend and crime-fighting partner, Dr. John Watson, Holmes uses his towering talents to apprehend the nefarious Lord Blackwood, an apparent Satan-worshipper with a fondness for killing young aristocrats in gruesome, unspeakable ceremonies. Blackwood is tried, convicted and sent to the gallows. But before Holmes can say, "Watson! Bring me my violin!" Blackwood seems to resurrect himself and begins to kill again.

It’s a ticklish case for Holmes—particularly since his gray matter is uncharacteristically preoccupied with more personal matters. Matter one: Dr. Watson is engaged to be married and is preparing to leave 221B Baker Street—a move which Holmes takes personally and a tad petulantly. Matter two: Holmes’ old flame Irene Adler has re-emerged in London, looking pretty as ever and asking for his help in finding a missing man.

Ah, life was so much easier for Holmes when he just had the occasional hound of hell to deal with. …

:: Review
We ultra-modern culture consumers love our fictional heroes. It doesn’t matter if they’re 10 years old, 100 or 1,000. And if we haven’t seen them for a generation or so, we can’t help but pick them up again, dust them off and … change everything about them.

Mickey Mouse is now set for a makeover in the Wii game Epic Mickey. And rumor has it that Superman, in his next feature film, will turn dark and brooding.

Sherlock Holmes? Well, he’s always been a brooder. So what could Guy Ritchie do to make this 19th century detective a 21st century box-office draw? Make him more violent, of course! Pummel audiences with roundhouse kicks, Victorian nunchucks and outsized explosions! And I haven't even gotten to the sinister Satanic cult and the occult rituals complete with pentagrams and dripping blood. We can’t expect people to sit in a theater and marvel at a man’s bare-brained brilliance for two hours, can we? We don’t have that kind of attention span anymore!

The deerstalker cap is gone, arguably a good thing. And Holmes doesn’t do cocaine and morphine the way Doyle wrote him.

But there’s a certain irony in the idea that in an age when technology is king and high school nerds go to class reunions driving Corvettes and Aston Martins after launching billion-dollar Internet start-ups, we somehow can’t embrace the essentially geeky Holmes. No, we must tweak him with a little Charles Bronson, a little Jackie Chan and a little Severus Snape.

What’s next? Hercule Poirot as an eccentric Belgian weight lifter and sometime rave DJ? Miss Marple as an angsty, twentysomething supermodel?

Maybe I’ll just read a book.

Email (will not be published)

Name

Title

Comment
 remaining characters

Post