Holmes without mystery

Rating: 6/10 (16 January 2010)

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and his trusted swashbuckling limp-legged sidekick Dr Watson (Jude Law) are two peas of a criminological pod-unit in the XIX Century. Lightyears ahead in knowledge of the London bobbies (not to mention the outdated methods of CSI) they are an unstoppable detective force, that breaks down any mystery within a matter of minutes. They are essentially Batman and Robin of the XIX Century... just without the masks.
One of their cases forces them to solve a mysterious series of murders committed on young women. The culprit is Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a member of a hidden sect and an learned adept of the black arts. Sherlock Holmes manages to foil Lord Blackwood just before he attempts to sacrifice another girl on his black altar of power. This sees Blackwood thrown into prison and prepping up for the noose.
After ending this supposedly last big mission Sherlock Holmes locks himself away frustrated with his awesomeness and the boredom on the outside (he simplicity of cases to be offered is very frustrating). Hence he indulges into wacky experiments on animals (poor pouch), gets wasted regularly and throws himself into illegal back-alley brawls to waste the time. In the meantime Dr Watson finds himself a beautiful woman with whom he aims to spend the rest of his life with, thus creating a new sphere of everyday existence that no longer entails Holmes or solving crimes. Meanwhile Lord Blackwood is to be hanged...
This is a movie I really wanted to like, but in the end I found it very wanting in most areas. Robert Downey Jr and surprisingly Jude Law both do a fine job in the respective parts and since they are key to the story you deftly find yourself asking why the movie constantly falls short of its promise.
For one thing Sherlock Holmes has been transformed from a great detective into a supernatural superhero. The crimes are basically unsolvable with pure logic and only due to Holmes having superhuman cognizance and total awareness is he able to solve them. This leaves viewers to being basically receptacles of Holmes brilliance, but in no way are we capable of actually trying to solve the puzzle. We just quietly have to accept the solution presented on a silver platter. All in all this leads the movie about Sherlock Holmes focused on action, because it is devoid of any real mystery. In the end you just wait until Sherlock Holmes explains the plot point. No inner voice says 'Oh yeah! That's was so obvious!' or 'Wow! I never thought of that!'. After Holmes explains the non-mystery in this detective story its back to the no hold barred action.
Secondly and surprisingly Guy Ritchie really fell short in the one place he used to excel in - the comedy department. Despite having such an excellent comedic actor in Robert Downey Jr all the jokes in this movie fall well short. Some of the gags are really quite brilliant, but even those don't even get a smirk out of you. The scenes are too rushed and have no real comedic feeling. Instead of building the joke and then letting it burst at the right moment all the jokes are basically leaking out of a punctured balloon. Adding to that most jokes are extremely clichéd and have a 'done that' feel to them. Its almost like rewatching "Maverick".
Thirdly the movie has a comic-book feel to it, but not in the Christopher Nolan manner (good), but more in the direction of Batman and Robin. This movie really needs less punchlines and more dark dramatic scenes that bring a bit of seriousness to the movie.
There are some very strong points to the movie. One of these is the beautiful presentation of old London, which really is jaw-dropping and the best such achievement of presenting a XIX century town in cinema history. I was also very impressed by three scenes, which really showed how talented a storyteller Guy Ritchie can be. One of these concerned Sherlock Holmes thinking out step by step what he would do to his opponent in a boxing match and then doing it in real time. The second was a sequence of blasts which really were very intense and gave the movie a dramatic punch. The third was a retrospective in which we find out what Sherlock Holmes did just minutes earlier. All three scenes are brilliantly shot and really added two stars to my general vote for this movie. Another 2 stars I give due to the fine duo performance by Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Unfortunately the director was not up to par to the acting.
Just to end on a positive note: The movie definitely deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.