There has been a lot of furore over this latest adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story, mostly referring to this being unfaithful to the original stories. Those stories have been adapted to death and for someone to go ahead and make such a well known character as Holmes into a modern-day action hero, albeit still set in he Victorian era, takes some amount of guts, especially when he must know that he would be getting a flogging from the die-hard fans. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the movie is any good.
Guy Ritchie’s version of the Holmes story is a kind of bro-mance between Holmes and his sidekick Watson with strong homosexual overtones. They bicker like an old couple, they live together and do everything together except have sex. Or at least the sex is not on-screen. It’s a pairing that works, with Downey Jr. and Jude Law having a good bit of chemistry together, verbally slapping each other at every opportunity. This is by far the best element from the movie, two good actors braving through a script that is just so-so.
The story tells of sorcery and evil charactes buts it’s all just an excuse for action scenes and the playfulness between the two characters. It’s pretty bare bones but it’s made very simple to follow. The movie’s dumb but it doesn’t have any aspirations other than to entertain the audience so the audience can switch off their mind without the worry of actually learning anything.
It’s good, clean fun and with the news of number two being rushed along in the works it seems the audience thought the same thing.
