CSI: Victorian London meets Fight Club with a dash of Trainspotting - Superdave

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2010)

Sherlock Holmes has been played more times by more different actors than almost any other role, and director Guy Ritchie has tackled the job of revitalizing and revisioning Conan Doyle's famous detective for the Harry Potter generation with this mostly successful and diverting entertainment. In the first five minutes of the movie, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson manage to capture an English Lord who has taken up the Black Arts as part of a sinister grab for supreme political power in Victorian England. And the arrest and even hanging of the sorcerer does nothing to slow down the timetable of his master scheme. Holmes himself, as conceived by the writers and portrayed by Downey Jr., is almost the anti-Basil Rathbone: slobbish, obsessed and substance abusing, barely able to contain let alone find outlet for his vast interests and towering intellect. Unlike the dapper, arch and self-assured Rathbone, Downey Jr. is perpetually down at heels and on the verge of emotional melt-down, whipsawing between scientific experimentation and chasing criminals, and finding occasional release in back-alley bare-knuckle brawling and jags of drunkenness. It is a daring and interesting re-conception of one of the most familiar figures in literature and this portrait of Holmes is odd enough alone to keep the audience diverted while the central criminal plot unfolds. Holmes' world is dirty, fog-bound and grim to the point of being near monochromatic, a far cry from the usually spotless, glamorized Hollywood image of gas-lit London. Unexpected and recommended viewing.