Company: Silver Pictures, Lin Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, Wigram Prods
Plot
WHEN a string of murders baffles Scotland Yard, they call in Sherlock Holmes and his colleague Dr. Watson. What Holmes discovers is a set of clues that lead to a secretive cult whose driving force, Lord Blackwood is developing a plan to take control of Parliament with his own society and rule through fear. But there is another mysterious evil figure, who has hired the beautiful Irene Adler, an accomplished sleuth herself and Holmes’ one time love interest, to ferret out information that could shift the balance of power.
Review
THE subdued charm of Conan Doyle’s hansom cabs, enveloping fogs, and courteous manners, in which the facade of gentility is broken up so delightfully by devilish conspiracies, is not of our age. In Ritchie’s version, the facade doesn’t even exist: his London is rubbled and mucky, with beggars underfoot, and fouled by half-finished industrial monstrosities. Ritchie’s visual style, aided by the cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, is graphic-novel Victoriana: there are steampunk interiors—ironworks and infernal machines with a retrofuturistic look—and dim laboratories in which everything looks rank. The movie is grimly overproduced and exhausting, an irritating, preposterous, but fitfully enjoyable work, in which every element has been inflated.
David Denby, The New Yorker
ARTHUR Conan Doyle’s iconic Sherlock Holmes, the British detective with extraordinary deductive powers in the hands of director Guy Ritchie will disappoint many—including me. He has opted to create a buddy movie set in 19th Century London in which violence, action and stunts takes precedence over character and the very essence of what Sherlock Holmes (and his side-kick Dr. Watson) represents. It’s as though Ritchie cannot believe a good tale well told and elegant characterisations alone can carry a film.
Louise Keller, Urban Cinefile.com.au
DOWNEY’S take on the character, while considerably different from that of any of his illustrious predecessors, remains within Conan Doyle’s parameters. The reason Sherlock Holmes fails at least as often as it succeeds is because more effort and attention was lavished upon the concept than upon the script. Given a worthy story, Downey’s Holmes might have been memorable.
