I walked into Sherlock Holmes more than a little anxious. As a longtime fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective and a voracious reader of his exploits, I was concerned that director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) was going to transform the beloved literary icon into little more than a parodic caricature (with an American actor standing in for the most quintessential of English characters, no less). As it turns out, Ritchie towed a very fine line, flirting with lampooning, burlesque satire to be sure, but also managed, just barely, to pull his film back from the brink and salvage something that, while forgettable, is at least an entertaining romp.

When London is rocked by a series of bizarre, ritualistic murders, detective Sherlock Homes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his partner Watson (Jude Law) are called in to solve the case. The killer, they discover, is Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong playing his part as a mix between Dracula and a mustache twirling Bond villain), a purveyor of satanic dark arts, who, just before the hangman’s noose cracks his neck, proclaims that death is merely the first step in a diabolical plan of world domination. His “resurrection” throws the city into a panic, and tests Holmes’ formidable observational powers and deductive skills like never before.

Ritchie gives Holmes and Watson’s relationship a latent homoerotic undertone. He is not actually suggesting there is something sexual going on between the men, but finds a playful dynamism in presenting them as a constantly bickering married couple. This squabbling only increases as the time draws nearer for Watson to move out of 221B Baker Street in preparation for his forthcoming marriage, a union Holmes tries to break up with unrepentant gusto. Holmes has women issues of his own in Irene Adler (the scrumptious Rachel McAdams), an alluring American femme fatale who is also Holmes’ intellectual equal. Too bad we see so little of her.

Ritchie and Downey Jr.’s Holmes is both an intellectual superhero and a swashbuckling action star. It’s not that Ritchie has reimagined Holmes. He has not. He has simply suppressed those classic elements with which we are all culturally familiar and elevated the courser, less gentlemanly aspects of his hero’s personality, those elements better suited both for an action movie, and a fairly comedic one at that. Doyle’s Holmes was indeed a bohemian with eccentric tastes that often ran counter to contemporary, Victorian standards. He was arrogant, often disdainful of his law enforcement colleagues, enjoyed bare-knuckle fighting as sport, lived in decadent squalor, was addicted to cocaine, and was indeed an expert in the use of canes, swords and even the martial arts. (The filmmakers take poetic license when turning him into a rumpled, slovenly, unhygienic mess when Doyle describes him as having an almost cat-like obsession with personal cleanliness.) Purists, like myself, will still take a healthy dose of umbrage at this blatant lack of fidelity, but this Holmes is, at least, not unrecognizable. Tweaked, yes. Skewed, certainly. But not, all in all, a wholly dishonest representation.

Sherlock Holmes is a noisy, brutish film full of refined violence. Holmes and Watson dress like gents, but fight like thugs. Holmes’ fisticuffs are played out in glorious slow motion, with descriptive previews of how he intends to incapacitate his opponents. All this takes place in a post-industrial CGI London that, with its filthy thoroughfares and grimy construction projects, previsions the gangster films for which Ritchie is best known. Hans Zimmer’s music matches the pyrotechnic panache of Ritchie’s direction, a raucous score stuffed with angry violins.

By and large, Sherlock Holmes is playful and fun, and moves at a whiplash pace. But it does not end with anything approaching closure. Presumptuous in the extreme, it takes for granted the fact that a sequel will follow (rest assured, it will) and, rather than satisfy its viewers, would rather whet their appetite for a future encounter between Holmes and his arch-nemesis, the brilliant and treacherous Dr. Moriarty.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.