Sherlock Holmes

Thanks a lot, Guy Ritchie (that was sarcasm, by the way). You've taken a literary icon and transformed him into a big-screen bore. It's not even like I was expecting you to deliver anything all too special, although a fun and entertaining mystery would have been nice. But you're the guy who directed your then-wife Madonna in the hilariously awful Swept Away remake, so I guess it's my own fault for giving you something that faintly resembles the benefit of the doubt. You've taught me a lesson about viewer trust, because your blockbuster version of Sherlock Holmes is big, loud, and stupidly soulless.

There are many reasons why this remake or "reimagining" or whatever you want to call it doesn't work, but let's start with the obvious. Usually, one thing I (and I'm sure most others) like to see in a Sherlock Holmes tale is a nifty mystery. But this hackneyed plot that pits the wily detective (Robert Downey, Jr.) against a brooding dude named Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), who happens to have a fondness for satanic rituals, is pretty dull stuff. Also, the supposed mystery is really just a bunch of hokey nonsense invented to string us viewers along until Holmes can finally explain the whole plot to us at the end.

First of all, those scenes where Holmes rattles off a laundry list of clues and gives away the entire story in under five minutes of screen time are only interesting to watch if the mystery is at all, well, mysterious. Stuffing your movie with a series of uninteresting plot developments that suggest one thing and then telling us at the end that it's all actually something else (but equally uninteresting!) kind of defeats the purpose of a good mystery. I thought the point was to engage the viewer by including them in the twists and turns of the plot, challenging them to follow the clues, but apparently it's all far more simple than that. Tell them it's something dumb and then surprise them with something dumber. Nice approach, Guy (that was sarcasm again).

To be sort of fair, you did hire a talented costume designer in Jenny Beavan, who makes everything from Holmes' ratty clothing to the lavish dresses worn by female lead Rachel McAdams look far more intriguing and fun than anything your direction offers. And you made a wise decision by bringing composer Hans Zimmer on board. Zimmer's score is a raucous blend of fiddling mayhem and bombastic boom. Even when your uninspired direction muddles a wayward action sequence, Zimmer's music at least makes the aural experience a momentarily exciting one.

But for every good decision you've made with this clunker, you've made about ten bad ones. I'm no math expert or anything, but that sounds like a pretty terrible ratio to me. One of those bad decisions lies in your desire to preview certain fight sequences. While Holmes plans his extremely detailed attack, you give us a slow motion breakdown of the coming events. Then once you've laid out the plan, you show it all to us again, now sped up and minus the element of surprise. Here's a tip: once we've seen one guy beat up another guy, we probably don't want to see the exact same thing again, presented in almost the exact same manner. Or maybe that's just me.

I'd say rolling the cameras with the daft screenplay draft credited to Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg as your guideline was a bad idea, too, but clearly a good chunk of the blame for that misstep should fall on the shoulders of the writers themselves. Beyond sticking to the Victorian London setting of Arthur Conan Doyle's original tales, the writers have taken various liberties with the characters, such as making this Holmes a boozy, brawny version of the detective we all know, so they were afforded plenty of room to come up with a crackling and original plot. Instead, they've given Holmes a couple of passable lines and crafted a villain role that could have been played by anyone with a penchant for goofy glares. For the plot, they nixed the possibility of a whodunnit and favoured a focus on Lord Blackwood's nefarious plan.

That approach could work if executed well and the decision to go that route is somewhat understandable, especially since a whodunnit probably seemed like a rather obvious way to go with a Sherlock Holmes story. But the biggest benefit of choosing to reveal the villain right from the beginning and make his elaborate endgame the focus of the mystery is that the antagonist can be effectively developed in a manner that would be impossible in a plot that keeps the villain's identity hidden until the end. My problem with this hubristically challenged Holmes tale is that the villain shows up in the first scene and yet he never receives the slightest glimmer of engaging character development. Instead, he occasionally pops up in the narrative to remind us how positively evil he is, a fact that is made all the more blatant by his creepily protruding tooth and slicked back hair.

Now, I must admit that the cast looks pretty good on paper, but your direction has really stripped them of the energy that these talented actors can bring to a movie. Downey, Jr. is actually pretty boring for most of the movie, an effect I previously thought impossible. Jude Law's version of Watson is just another stuffy sidekick who likes to whine and kick stuff on occasion. And Rachel McAdams, usually so radiant and wonderful, is stuck playing both a femme fatale and a damsel in distress, without seeming to have any fun with either role. I definitely think that all three actors mostly phone in their performances, but it is part of your job as a director to inspire them to dig deep and create something that is uniquely engaging.

So, despite the attractive costumes and the fitting score, your movie pretty much stinks. You once again exhibit a lack of visual ingenuity and you fail to deliver a mystery tale that invites the audience into the mystery. Since the movie is clearly designed to be a franchise starter and the possibility of a sequel seems like a sure bet, I hope you return with a smarter, more dramatically robust Holmes adventure. I don't care that you've taken the character in a somewhat different direction, but I do feel that these movies require a narrative sharpness that operates on a higher plane than soulless torment. Then again, your movie is making money and you'll probably just play it safe and stick to the same formula, afraid to shake things up and try something new. Either way, I know that whatever project you choose to tackle next is one that I will be wary of. So once more, thanks a lot, Guy Ritchie, for making a rotten flick and reminding me why I originally turned my back on your movies long ago.