Sherlock Holmes: Movie Review
By Megan Carroll
Guy Ritchie’s resurrection of the beloved adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is truly a Holmes for the new decade. The film is a brilliant modern action adventure that breathes new life into one of the great detectives of all time. With an incredibly dark and mystical storyline by Lionel Wigram, the audience is reminded of one of our long lost friends: the great detective Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes is an exciting movie that promises to be a successful franchise.
Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) plays an incredibly deductive genius that wows us with his extensive knowledge and observation skills. Ritchie takes Doyle’s Holmes and places him under a microscope, amplifying the character and forcing Holmes’ other eccentricities to the forefront. Alluded to within Doyle’s writing, Holmes’ “only vice” is his drug use, manic depressive states, and unorganized surroundings. Holmes is recognizable in the film but exaggerated by Ritchie’s warped view. Ritchie creates Holmes as an eccentric, disheveled savant that is lost within his own madness who only breathes reality while honing in on the solution to a mystery.
Downey portrays a highly disturbed, yet mesmerizing, Holmes that coyly plays with our curiosity. Downey walks the line between charismatic and hauntingly exceptional. His deep friendship with his counterpart Watson (Jude Law) only cements Holmes more deeply into the audience’s minds and hearts. Watson is the ying to Holmes’ yang: a confident, well-mannered gentleman trying to create a normal existence while fighting his inner demons instead of wholeheartedly embracing them. The duo is cinematic excitement in the making. Their chemistry is undeniable and only heightens the fun.
Incorporating Holmes extensive martial arts knowledge and weaponry, John Watkiss brings us incredible images of a gritty Holmes that reminds one of a 19th century super hero. Watkiss creates a stunningly visual film that animates the London of the last century to a degree that the original Sherlock Holmes movies could not portray. With incredible camera techniques and unique shots, Watkiss brings mundane fight scenes to life. Integrating coarse and sweeping cityscapes, one is immediately whisked away into Holmes’s world of late 1800s England.
The film centers on the duo’s race to stop the dark Lord Blackwood. As the darkness takes over the film, Holmes’ and Watson’s constant comical banter allows a touch of brightness to shine through, but like any Holmes adventure you never know what is around the next corner. The film captures the same unrestricted fun of films like Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone or Ocean’s Eleven without losing the mystery. It has something for everyone. And like any good franchise, the film ended leaving you wanting more.
