Movie and Television Reviews

What a pleasure it was to sit and watch Sherlock Holmes. No lasers, super-powers, political agendas, 3-D effects. Just a rollicking tale, well-acted and directed.

Well, OK, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) is a super-hero of the James Bond, semi-realistic kind; except that Sherlock trades the ability to bed foreign spies for a more-developed sense of perception and steel-trap logic.

And, the scenes of Sherlock deducing stuff are as good as one could have hoped for. Sherlock driven nearly mad at a restaurant by his uncontrollable ability to notice minute details really shows how accursed this aptitude might be, a premise I don't remember from the older movies. His working himself into an almost trance-like state to piece together the amassed clues further illuminates this interesting perspective.

We also get to see Sherlock rough it up a bit. His smarts applied to martial combat is a nice touch.

Little dandiness, however. This Sherlock is a lonely, eccentric rogue with a gift that makes relating to others challenging.

SH begins with Sherlock interrupting a Lord Blackwell's ritual murder of a beautiful maiden and then reels off an effective extended character exposition of Sherlock and Dr. Watson, focusing in part on their queer co-dependence.

The only woman Sherlock's loved, the Victorian hottie Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), enters the picture when we're quite familiar with the duo to ask Sherlock's help in tracking down a midget.

From there, Sherlock uses his powers to find and check the apparently resurrected Lord Blackwell, who convinces a Masonic-like order to attempt a take-over of Britain and, from there, the world.

It's all good fun, even if it doesn't reach a level of super-intensity. It's better than the similar National Treasure movies, anyways. Like in NT, I liked the historical allusions. Britain dominating the world wasn't completely outside of the pale in the mid 1860s and the writers explain how the American Civil War makes an English conquest possible.

Robert Downey continues his scorched-earth comeback, imbuing Sherlock Holmes with a deep charisma. Jude Law as Watson is fine. Mark Watson makes a convincing pre-Black Sabbath Satanist.

SH unabashedly dips into the bag of cinema tricks to pull out the slightly differently-perspectived or new-scened flashbacks that both explain the plot and make us feel inferior to Sherlock for not being able to notice the things genius detectives do.

If I can fault the movie, it's perhaps in its romantic sub-plots. The movie goes not for a love triangle, but a love pentagram. The Sherlock-Adler one is fine, if little under-cooked. The concept of a lover who's also a rival is solid and Downey's acting does give one the sense that she's the only woman who can fluster him. Sherlock seems to find her nude-ness distracting. They hug, kiss once. Yet, we never see them close to passion. I don't want to over-emphasize this aspect of the movie. It's not bad, certainly doesn't ruin the film, and understandably incomplete considering the restricted screen time. In fact, forget I brought it up.

Watson has a fiance who's essentially a prop.

Sherlock and Watson give off a borderline-gay vibe. Their dialogue seems unrealistic unless unless seen this way: I don't think real guys bicker about waistcoats and try to ruin the other's relationships with the opposite sex.

Politics/Message:

The Masonic cult wants to seize power to help the teeming, ignorant masses who'd be lost without their enlightened guidance. Know any political parties with that attitude?

Not too much besides that: Friendship, loyalty, I guess.

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