Sherlock Holmes - Kung Fu Fighter

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2010)

About three minutes in, I had to run out in the Lobby to check what movie I was seeing. I thought I had purchased ticket for a Sherlock Holmes movie. You know. Sherlock Holmes - the genius detective who used his superior brain power to outwit villains of every stripe? But what I was seeing was Sam Spade. Somehow he got transported back to 19th century London and was persuading the bad guys with an astonishing array of knuckle sandwiches, knives and pistols. And the movie just continued in this vein - with Holmes punching it out with assorted thugs, including, I kid you not, Irish toughs who gather in cattle pens at the stockyard and stage fights for a purse. Who was this Holmes impersonator I wondered? I immediately riffled though my A Conan Doyle Complete Serlock Holmes books, and, much to my surprise, was able to find at least two episodes where Holmes talks about using the martial arts to subdue nefarious foes. He is also portrayed in the books as an expert swordsman. However, scenes with Holmes actually deploying fisticuffs apparently don't occur in the books at all.
So the movie producers and writers have modernized the current Holmes to make him more appealing to the "cage fighter" generation. I guess I can forgive them for that. It did make the movie more exciting than the "snail's-pace" action we got in all of the Basil Rathbone oeuvres from the thirties. In those, Holmes relied almost exclusively on his wits. However this movie used the violence as a plot vehicle too much in my opinion. I do miss Basil, even though his stereotyped version of Holmes also doesn't appear in the books. No deerstalker hat for example. It's not in the book. This movie also captures the tortured, opium-addicted, nature of Holmes quite well. That is mostly missing from the Rathbone movies.
Okay, overall this was a good movie, albeit a bit too rough, too little polish, too much bare-knuckles for my tastes. Go see it though. Holmes with wit - and grit to spare.