Well colour me surprised. Sherlock Holmes is quite good.

Rating: 7/10 (4 February 2011)

As anyone over say 25 knows Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character renowned for his powers of deduction and reasoning. Funny that anyone under 25 will think Holmes is "that movie guy who mumbles his lines and does parkour".
Nevertheless that's what is on display here. Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and his loyal sidekick Dr Watson (Jude Law) kick-ass and dust for clues all over 18th Century England trying to hunt down a master criminal using only the power of Holmes's massively intuitive melon.
Fortunately there are a lot of things in the movie to deduce, although I think in the scene where they spent many minutes trying to work out how to get away from a band-saw might have been fast tracked by simply hitting the sawblade with a brick. Those things might cut through flesh like butter but they are brittle as a cracker if you hit them on the side.
Moving on...
Early in the piece Holmes and Watson end the reign of terror - and the life - of naughty man Lord Blackwood. Well imagine everyone's surprise when they are asked to solve another case, the case of why Lord Blackwood is back and wreaking havoc all over London with his zany satanic rituals and murderousness.
Rachel McAdams is Holmes's love interest and apparently somewhat of a master gold-digging criminal herself, for some reason she fascinates Holmes. Maybe it's her rack? As always on these things the detectives don't find themselves on "a" case, but "the" case. The case takes them through both the darker more sinister areas of London and all the way to the heads of Government - or are those things both the same? Downey Jr is at times hard to hear with his mumbling, but as always he remains interesting. Jude Law solidifies his position as the prettiest male actor still able to achieve some form of street cred (albeit cobblestone streets) and Rachel McAdams runs around wearing big dresses and will no doubt tell interviewers on her next film that she did the film because "it can't all be about the awards all the time".
Guy Ritchie has never had a bigger budget and although nothing about this film screams All Time great it is a fun movie and moves along at pace. A couple of the setpieces worked very well and a sequence of explosions in particular appeared very dangerous and effectively drew me into the action. After Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels I thought Ritchie had a long career as an A grader ahead of him, then came Snatch which was only a minor notch down, then a couple of howlers. I'm glad he's found his swagger again here and think he deserves a budget that allows him to be more creative, after all if Zack Snyder and M. Night Shamalamadingdong keep getting work based upon a solid debut Ritchie is deserved of a couple more shots - after all the guy put up with Madonna for the better part of a decade as she transitioned from pop star to scary muscleman.
Final Rating - 7.5 / 10. A fun two hours. I would venture with more action, fistfights and bare chests than the novels!