SHERLOCK HOLMES
January 25th 2010 01:19
Category: Movies
Based on the character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Director: Guy Ritchie
Screenplay: Michael Robert Jordan & Anthony Peckham
Producers: Dan Lin, Joel Silver, Susan Downey & Lionel Wigram
Starring: Robert Downey Jnr (Sherlock Holmes), Jude Law (Dr John Watson), Rachel McAdams (Irene Adler), Mark Strong (Lord Blackwood), Hans Matheson (Lord Coward), Kelly Reilly (Mary Marston), Eddie Marsan (Inspector Lestrade) & William Houston (Constable Clark)
Produced by: Village Roadshow Pictures
Released by: Warner Brothers
Running Time: 128 minutes Rating: M
It has been some time since I last visited the local cinema, what with several operations to reattach a detached retina getting out to the flicks has not been on my agenda. Far easier to get DVDs or read stuff than go to the movies but this weekend I decided to strike whilst the iron was hot and take my chance to see this latest rendition of the great detective that has been unleashed upon the silver screen. Admittedly I did have a few misgivings, namely would an American be able to carry that part of Holmes, he is after all English and some would say quintessentially so. After the dust had settled on the cobbled streets of London I would have to say that Mr Downey Jnr played a very good Holmes, certainly different from previous incarnations but no less entertaining.
For those of you who have no idea of what Sherlock Holmes is all about I shall endeavour to give you something of a run down to the basics; essentially Sherlock Holmes is the premier consulting detective within the Victorian Era world. Operating out of his rooms on 22B Bakers Street in London there is no better detective than he, his exploits and abilities are virtually the stuff of legend. He is an individual, who lives for the chase as it were, the ordinary and mundane do nothing to stimulate his considerable intellect and often he turns down lucrative cases purely because of the fact that they are not suitably stimulating or challenging. If you’ve ever seen any of my reviews on the Death Note anime, manga or live action films you’ll see similarities between Sherlock Holmes and the character of L.
This film with its occultism and esotericism also follows a prior incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, a film where the plot revolved around Holmes investigating the Jack the Ripper killings and discovering that it involved the work of Freemasons, highly placed member of the order, who were covering up a very dark secret. In this film we have a secret society that is similar in its function to the masons, although it bears more of the hall marks of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn than the masons. This order has been responsible for the guiding of the empire for some time due to the fact that a large number of its members are highly placed public officials, its leader being the actual father of the ‘deceased’ Lord Blackwood.
When the dust settles on this film you are left with the feeling though that even though the rational processes of Holmes deductive methods and emerging modern science has triumphed there is still an element of somewhat dark and macabre poetry to the whole affair. As if some power is watching over the whole affair and just waiting for the right moment to make its presence felt, although not so much to the competing individuals involved but to the audience as a whole. The final scene of the confrontation between Lord Blackwood and Holmes is somewhat macabre yet just in its denouement; the villain literally gets his just deserts although one wonders if it has had something to do with his meddling with forces man was not meant to meddle with.
As far as I am aware this entire story is not one you would find amongst the annals of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s collected works; it is an original work. The important thing though is that it has managed more than adequately to capture the feel, atmosphere and drama of the original. And with Guy Ritchie doing the directing the end product is definitely worthy of all the kudos it has been getting in the mainstream media. It’s almost as if he has taken the style of his previous films, Snatch, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and fused them with the literary creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create this work. If you have seen either of those two films and then watched this you would definitely see his particular touch and approach to films here.
The only problem I do have with Sherlock Holmes is the lighting, there are some scenes where unfortunately it is almost pitch black and considering that you are watching this in a darkened cinema doesn’t help either. For my mind the opening scenes of this compelling drama were a bit spoilt by the dark, certainly I have no doubt that the makers were attempting to go for a gothic approach considering the nature of the opening but they gave no consideration to how this was going to be viewed by an audience in a darkened cinema was my feeling. Atmosphere is all very good and well but not if your audience has a hard time seeing what the heck is going on. It’s the only fault with the film, once you get past this brief hiccup then its action packed intensity more than makes up for this blip. Definitely a movie to go see…
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