Nothing escapes him ... !!

Rating: 8/10 (9 January 2010)

Rob Downey Jr is back .... and how !! I knew I had to get my hands on those movie tickets as soon as soon as I first caught glimpse of the trailer. Being a huge fan of Doyle's work, I'm a big fan of Holmes. I own a lot of those BBC movies of Sherlock Holmes' different cases. Since I watched the making of the movie special on TV, I knew that this is not about any of Holmes' exploits penned by Doyle, rather this one is written by Lionel Wigram and Michael Robert Johnson.
This movie stars Robert Downey Jr. as the world's greatest detective himself and Jude Law as the surgeon, war veteran and above all Holme's faithful companion Dr. John Watson. Rachael McAdams is Irene Adler and Mark Strong , Lord Blackwood.
Directed by Guy Ritchie, this movie dares to explore parts of Holmes' individuality where the earlier movies and serials failed to venture. Voracious Holmes readers would know from the books that in spite of having the best deduction abilities anyone could ever have, he was a total mess.
He would often need someone to shake him back in touch with the world or else, him and his legendary pipe, would have a field day, deep in his thoughts out of which he may not emerge back too soon. Besides that, readers would also know that Holmes was a great boxer, superb at martial arts ( read Jiu Jitsu , which he used to throw Proff. Moriearty off the waterfall in the return of Sherlock Holmes story ), had a thing for Irene Adler (A Scandal in Bohemia) and lived at 221B Baker Street, London.
This movie shows Holmes boxing, kicking butt, living in a mess and often requiring constant wake up calls from the good doctor. The Victorian London has been depicted impeccably with the dark environment, pebbled roads, the sound of hoofs a horse carriage would make, the rains, the puddles and the unfinished bridges.
Now those of us, who grew up watching those BBC specials of Sherlock Holmes (without much reading the unabridged stories), would have a hard time relating this movie to what BBC had fed us in the form of Sherlcok Holmes movies for years because they had neither the resources nor the conviction to portray that side of Holmes which made him more of a human. They would rather just stick to showing how extraordinarily well he was about almost everything.
Wel I do admit, the characters in the movie were not too much like what Sir Doyle etched in his books. Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes was not the tall, thin pointy nosed excuse for an individual. Nor was Dr Watson, the bumbling fool which Nigel Bruce popularized in the 1930-40s films. Jude Law's Watson was fast, fierce, knowledgeable (no match for Holmes however) and quite the fighter which one would need to be if one were to get caught in the situations that following Holmes would lead you in.
So I believe, that most franchises were changing their look to suit today's audience, this movie , very cleverly utilized the uncharted territory of Holmes' character and used a different story altogether to prevent fans from knowing the end and in process bring in more people. Now this is a movie both of masses and the classes.
I seriously recommend this movie to about everyone.