Sherlock Holmes

Given the current vogue for re-inventions of iconic characters (Batman, James Bond, Superman et al), you might have predicted what a 2009 Sherlock Holmes film might have been like quite safely, pitching it somewhere between Young Sherlock Holmes and Batman Begins. A brilliant, unfocused young man, possibly with one great tragic love affair yet to come, discovers near-uncanny powers of deduction during exotic travels, mentored by an equally brilliant mastermind, known only as ‘Moriarty’. As Holmes falls in with a recently discharged army veteran, soldier-cum-doctor John Watson, he realises that Moriarty is up to no good…

Thus the film that might have been expected, an origin story that clearly dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s of what the Holmes character did to become the legendary inhabitant of 221b Baker Street. It is probably to Guy Ritchie, Joel Silver and Robert Downey Jnr’s credit that the finished film bears no relation to this idea. Holmes here is in mid-career, having an amusingly camp relationship with his long-suffering sidekick Dr Watson (as played by an improbably dashing and fist-handy Jude Law) and a brilliant detective. Thus, when the satanic Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, Hollywood’s villain du jour) apparently rises from the grave after his execution and promises an apocalyptic reckoning on London, it is down to Holmes and Watson to save the day.

Purists may carp – and they will – at the way that Conan Doyle’s complex, tormented detective has been simplified, even softened. Downey Jnr’s performance has echoes of his Tony Stark, even his superb performance as Harry Lockhart in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and he’s an engaging protagonist, but in Ritchie’s envisioning of the character, he’s straightforward, a tad eccentric perhaps but an efficient man of action whose deductive skills come second to his talents with the fisticuffs. Watson is more or less the same, slightly more settled in his ways (he has a fiancee, indifferently embodied by Kelly Reilly) but handy in a fight. Strong plays a suitably vile villain, although he cannot but seem like a curtain-raiser for the inevitable appearance of Moriarty in the sequel.

It’s all good straightforward knockabout fun, capably directed by Ritchie who proves an unexpectedly dab hand at some large-scale set pieces, and with some genuinely funny lines. If it’s finally somewhat ephemeral, a tad overlong and not helped by Rachel McAdams in a largely irrelevant part as Holmes’ former paramour, it’s still a rollicking two hours of old-fashioned entertainment. And Hans Zimmer’s terrific score, making good use of weird instrumentation such as the Jew’s harp and zither, is a fantastic accompaniment. It may be out at Boxing Day, but it’s far from a turkey.