Physical and ManicBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
Dr. John Watson: Holmes, does your depravity know no bounds?
Sherlock Holmes: No.
The Da Vinci Code meets The Wild, Wild West by way of Jackie Chan and The Fight Club?Robert Downey, Jr. captures the manic, addictive nature of Sherlock Holmes without the sober intellectuality of Basil Rathbone, the Holmes against which all others are measured. Director Guy Ritchie sets a feverish pace for the Victorian detective story, allowing Downey to overindulge his acting tics and considerable athletic ability to create a modern emblem of the deductive thinker, imitating the more physical evidencing of CSI rather than the traditionally contemplative crime fighter of Conan Doyle's Holmes.
The intellectual side seems to come from the 20th-century attitude-indulging of Holmes and Dr. Watson (Jude Law), himself an accomplished fighter and worrier. Their banter even when they are fighting a French giant (imagine that! shades of James Bond) is more Butch Cassidy than Sherlock Holmes.
As in the Da Vinci Code, the villain is associated with a secret powerful organization, like the Masons, that plans a serious overthrow of government and world domination. Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) is the pre-Moriarity evil brain, who seemingly has come back from the dead to further his nefarious plot.
Holmes, like Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, is the brains outside the police solving Blackwood's crimes because Inspector Lestrade and his cops are clueless. Not that we don't get the usual Holmesian lectures about the simple clues we and Lestrade missed; it's just that Downey delivers them rapid fire as if he couldn't wait to get to the next athletic activity. Rathbone could deliver them like sipping a fine wine.
The strength of the film is in the physicality, from meticulously designed London settings to incessant and overly long fisticuffs. The bare knuckling allows Downey to be shirtless, a plus for older folks who thought such a physique the province of men half his age.
The presence of gifted criminal Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) is a welcome touch as she sparks the kind of analysis Holmes needs most?of himself. Ritchie has picked this little part of the Holmes legend wisely but fails to expand it in a classic opportunity lost to the relentless action.
This Sherlock Holmes is a 20th century quick-cut sleuth in 19th century waistcoat. I have plenty of memories of that hyperactive 20th; I just wanted to smoke a pipe in the 19th with a reserved Holmes and listen to the deductions of his exploits.
I'll wait for the Rathbone reruns.
Dr. John Watson: [to Holmes draining a liquid] You do know what you are drinking is meant for eye surgery?
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com