In 2009 director Guy Ritchie came out with his version of Sherlock Holmes, a movie of the same name starring Robert Downey Jr as Holmes, Jude Law as his friend & sidekick Dr. John Watson and Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler. Mark Strong plays the villain Lord Blackwood, who has somehow returned after his execution with a plot to take over the British Empire using an arsenal of dark arts and new technologies. The film was also nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Original Score and Best Art Direction, which it lost toUp and Avatar, respectively.
Now I am a Robert Downey Jr. fan and have admires some of his work throughout the years but I did feel that he was a weird choice for playing the famed English detective. I’ve always known Sherlock Holmes to be a tall, lanky as most people would put it, somewhat frail man, what with his penchant for cocaine and barely taking care of himself. Don’t get me wrong, Downey is a great actor but I wasn’t convinced that he was the apt choice & well that accent is not English enough for me. And at times he seemed that he was concentrating on perfecting the accent.
One actor who has no problem with the English accent, well cause he is English, is Jude Law and I thought he did a commendable effort in portraying Watson. Law plays him as an strong individual, opinionated, with his own views and not afraid to voice them. However he is a true friend and extremely loyal to Holmes even when his famous comrade is bent on brooding. He manages (barely) to find a balance between his adventures with Holmes and his impending marriage to Mary.
Rachel does a fine job as Irene Adler, not looking too young beside Downey jr (as was initially feared) and plays the thief & femme fatal role with aplomb. Although she is a former adversary of Holmes, they share a liking & strong attraction for each other. She is also intimated by Prof. Moriatty, who she says is Holmes’ intellectual equal but is more devious than the detective.
The fight scenes are well choreographed and comes out extremely good in the movie, but I wonder why they did the pre-narrative thing twice followed by the actual fighting. Just weird! I thought depecting a very dark looking London streets with lots of rain to make it seem even more somber or macabre added to the effect of the movie. I think it’s a good movie that will resurrect Hollywood watching public’s interest in the Holmes universe. 7 outa 10!
I thought that he was perfect! Sherlock Holmes was never frail Roshan – he was eccentric! Robert Downey Jr captured the essence of that character really well, and you do know why? Well, it’s because he was a coke fiend for some time too!! So he knows exactly how to portray a character such as Sherlock Holmes! I found it serious when it needed to be, but despite the sombre looking London (which was apt, given the time period it was supposed to depict), but very funny at times! I would give it 9/10. Guess that’s why we have a sequel coming out in December!