Not Really Sherlock Holmes, More Like Norris as Bond

Rating: 5/10 (31 October 2010)

This is a Guy Ritchie movie first off. If you liked "Snatch" or "Lock, Stock.. ", you'd probably like this one. As just a movie, it is par for a modern detective buddy kick ass movie like Lethal Weapon, dressed in Victorian garb. He is supposed to be Sherlock Holmes but he's more like Mel Gibson's Lethal Weapon's Riggs, an unstable violence dealing character, than the staid, calm, thoughtful Holmes most of us are familiar with. That part is what bothers me in all these re-imaginings ala Star Trek, where some icon is turned into a ass kicking machine full of non stop stunts & special effects. Ironically, the main saving grace is Robert Downey Jr. who did a good job bringing his dissolute but ass kicking Holmes character to life. For instance, Holmes engages in bare fisted underground boxing matches, like Pitt in "Snatch", to raise money & stay fit. Okay, the old Holmes was no wimp, but he was not into large amounts of hacking, kicking & blasting that modern blubber heads demand from their heroes. Rachel McAdam was okay as some sort of Catwoman nemesis, accomplice and love aspect Irene Adler to Holmes. But even she was more like Alice from "Resident Evil" than what an upper class Victorian woman would be, with her fighting skills almost on par with our dynamic duo. Jude Law played the dandified but equally bad ass Dr. Watson, with a Felix-Oscar like tension between the two heroes over Holmes-Downey's obnoxious, dissolute ways, which was funny and added some humor.
Okay, there is some plot about some evil Lord Blackwood, played by the same guy who was the evil don from "Kick-Ass", Mark Strong. He and his upper class pals are into some black magic Egyptian like Satanic cult. He mysteriously comes back from the dead, after a well deserved hanging, to terrorize London and bring his black magic cabal into power. Well the Black Lord is scaring the bejeesus out of everyone except Holmes who is dogging him and his crew through London with the seemingly unwilling help of Watson & Adler.
In this, the movie reminds me of the far better "From Hell" which featured a dissolute but far less lethal detective, played by Johnny Depp, dogging some mumbo jumbo star chamber cult that was butchering whores ala Jack the Ripper. That movie spent some time exploring the bad part of town and more intangible magical aspects, as opposed to the detailed but utterly phony CGI London in this movie, a set that never stopped crying "High Price FAKE".
Okay, in brief, the acting made it bearable, but the perversion of such an icon, as well as the cheesy Victorian CGI set & EFX extravaganza made it lose what ever class and charm that one would expect from Sherlock Holmes.