Ignore the lukewarm critics: this is good, solid, entertaining fare

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2011)

You've got to feel a little bit sorry for director Guy Ritchie: it seems whatever he does, it isn't right. Why? Well, it's not what he does which is at fault, but because he's Guy Ritchie. Just as some people - directors, politicians, sports people, anyone, really - seem never to lose the public's adoration (Quentin Tarantino has quite successfully overcome the appalling turkey of a film which was Glorious Basterds for no other reason, apparently, but that he is Quentin Tarantino), others somehow get off on the wrong foot and after that are never really forgiven. I have only seen one other Guy Ritchie film and that wasn't half bad. I'm told he has made a couple of duds, but I am in no position to judge. His other failing, of course, is that he married Madonna, although why that should be held against him - and it is - is a mystery to me. But Ritchie is Ritchie, so the logic goes, so his new take on Sherlock Holmes can't be all that good. Too flash, bang, wallop say some. Nothing like the Holmes conceived by Conan Doyle, say others. In fact, there are any number of complaints and criticisms of Ritchie's version, each one, it seems to me, pickier than the last. Ebert liked it but gives it only three stars, and other critics were all too often distinctly lukewarm. Well, my advice is to have none of it. I don't give a monkeys whether or not Ritchie's Holmes is 'true to the 'tec we all love and know'. He's a fictional character, for heaven's sake, and Ritchie is free to do with him what he wants. Then there are the complaints that there is too much fighting, that the film seems to go from one set piece punch-up to another. Granted, there is a lot of fisticuffs, but why isn't that charge levelled against other, in my opinion, far inferior dreck? As far as I'm concerned Ritchie has nothing to be ashamed of and a lot to feel proud of. His take on the Holmes franchise - no deerstalker in sight, thank goodness - is a rattling good tale, reasonably puzzling and imaginatively conceived. His production designer's Victorian London has come up trumps (with skilfully used CGI) and the rather cinematic look of the film - dark browns and shadow - works well with that London. The plot is a reasonably ingenious one, and I particularly liked Mark Strong's villain who comes across as an amalgam of would-be Nazi dictator (just look at the haircut) and Dracula. Robert Downey and Jude Law work well together and make a convincing Holmes and Watson and there is a lightness to the whole operation which rather pleased me. Ritchie's film sets out to entertain and does so, admirably, and doesn't take itself to seriously, which I feel is something the professional critics do a little. So go for it. There's absolutely noting wrong with Ritchie's take and a great deal that is right. The good news is that a sequel is already in the can.