A brilliant film! What are the critics complaining about?

Rating: 10/10 (11 January 2010)

When we first saw the trailer to Sherlock Holmes, my wife and I both got the impression that this film could be really good or really bad. Then when the reviews came out, I breathed a sigh of relief that we hadn't wasted our time and money running out to see it on opening night. We would have avoided it entirely if she hadn't suggested we go see some chick flick, causing me to grasp at "that silly Sherlock Holmes action film" as an escape hatch.
Now we are both furious at the critics for keeping us away from this film for so long. Robert Downey's Sherlock Holmes is the most compelling and authentic portrayal of the Holmes character I've ever seen. One of the first things we find out about Holmes in the Conan Doyle stories is that he's a manic depressive drug addict who engages in aberrant, self-destructive behavior like firing bullets into the walls of his apartment when he doesn't have a case to distract him from his inner demons. All Guy Ritchie does is emphasize this darker side of Holmes' character and use it to portray Holmes as a man of action as well as creature of the mind. That is a far cry from the wholesale reworking of Holmes that the critics accuse Ritchie of.
Ritchie's Holmes is a lonely misfit who lives with one foot in "respectable" society and the other in London's vast underworld. All of that is true to the stories. As for Watson, he is Holmes' only friend and the one person trying to save him from himself (again, true to the stories). For that reason, Watson's impending marriage is a threat to Holmes, and brings out some wonderful comic relief with Holmes acting the part of the aggrieved "wife" trying to overlook "her" husband's dalliances while working hard to undermine them and save the "marriage." That may go beyond what's in the stories, but it's a great way to make the two characters come alive in a way that a 21st Century audience can relate to. Failure to re-imagine their relationship in such a way runs the risk of treating Holmes and Watson as Victorian museum pieces; something that's been done quite enough.
Throw into the mix a supernatural plot with a villain in the mold of Aleister Crowley, and you have a superb film that shakes off the dust of 20th Century screen adaptations and gives us a fresh new Holmes for the 21st Century who is still 100% faithful to the character. I hope to see Downey and Law in many Holmes sequels to come.