I can't wait for the sequels

Rating: 9/10 (3 January 2010)

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have survived for the better part of 150 years thanks to to the characters ability to shift and change with the times. Despite all the shifts and changes the characters have always remained the same stalwart heroes at the center.
Such it is with Guy Ritchie's reinvention of Holmes as an action hero. Sure he is moving about in a more frenetic style, but at the same time he is at his center the same Sherlock Holmes we've always known and loved.
Here the case involves a certain Lord Blackwood who appears to have come back from the dead in a bid to take over the British Empire. Add to the mix the imminent departure of Watson for wedded bliss and the reappearance of Irene Adler and its clear Holmes has more on his plate then is usual.
What can I say but this is a perfectly adequate Holmes for our day, or any day for that matter. Downey's wonderful twist on the great detective is its clear he is neither infallible nor a machine. Homes missteps and he is very much a feeling sort of person, bother for what he perceives as his abandonment by Watson and his lust for the lovely Miss Adler. Downey makes Homes much more human than almost anyone I've ever seen other than perhaps Christopher Plummer in Murder by Decree. Actually I should note that the relationship between Holmes and Watson in this film and in Murder by Decree are the only two times where I find it clear why the two are friends. (Yes its clear in the Jeremy Brett series but there is more joy here and in Decree) I should also say that Jude Law's Watson is a wonderful man of action that runs roughshod over a century of ineffective Watsons.
I loved this film a great deal. And if there is anything that kept this film from making my best of the year list it's that the film's frantic pace becomes too much at the end and the film kind of loses its focus at the end ad events become BIGGER for no real reason other then spectacle.
A must see for anyone wanting to see a ripping yarn.