Sherlock Holmes as a martial-arts fighter, knocking out opponents not with logic but a kick to the solar plexus? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will be rolling in his grave – though in fact Sir Arthur’s rest has seldom been easy since his death in 1930. According to the Guinness Book of Film Facts & Feats, the Baker Street detective is the character most often portrayed on screen, having appeared in 175 films as of 1980 (when the book was published) – and almost all of those have taken liberties with Conan Doyle’s creation. In The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Holmes himself claimed that he and Dr Watson were a gay couple (sacrilege!); Without a Clue (1988) upended the relationship altogether, making Watson the smart one and Holmes just an empty façade. After all that, a kickboxing Sherlock is the least of our problems.
Besides, this new Sherlock Holmes – directed by Guy Ritchie, fresh from divorcing Madonna – is surprisingly faithful to the spirit of the stories, above all in emphasising Holmes as a creature of logic. Even when he performs some complicated fight move, he plans every part of it meticulously: we know because we see him thinking it through – Time slows down conveniently – before letting fly with his fists. Indeed, the film goes even further than Conan Doyle (who had a well-documented interest in psychics and spiritualism) in making Holmes a warrior in the fight between Rational and Supernatural.
Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) isn’t just a detective, he’s a scientist, carrying out eccentric experiments when he’s not investigating cases. His worthy adversary is Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a depraved toff who deals in Satanism and (apparently) comes back from the dead after being hanged. The film might’ve been made by Richard Dawkins of God Delusion fame, so determinedly does it set out to prove that everything has a rational explanation. You can almost feel Ritchie plunging into cool, blessed logic after years of the Material Girl’s fantasies.
This is fabulous, for two reasons: first, because Sherlock strikes a blow against the forces of superstition and scare-mongering – and second, because it strikes a blow against the increasing number of Hollywood movies that just Don’t Make Sense. Not for Ritchie the frankly ludicrous twists of The Book of Eli or A Perfect Getaway; everything gets explained here. No sooner do you ask yourself ‘But how could she have drugged the wine when the cork was sealed?’ than the film shows you how. Holmes makes deductions all the time, and happily shares them with the audience – not to mention Dr Watson.
Watson is another of the film’s happy innovations – no longer a harmless old duffer but, as played by Jude Law, a dashing man of action, bantering with Holmes while bashing baddies (“I like your hat”; “I just picked it up”) and even trying his hand at deductions. The relationship is even more interesting because Holmes is now rather childlike beneath the great-detective bluster – there’s an edge to the mocking way he calls long-suffering landlady Mrs Hudson “nanny”, like he knows it’s true – hopeless with women and emotion in general, badly needing someone to look after him. His barely-disguised despondency at Watson’s plans to move out of their shared digs and get married is surprisingly poignant.
Meanwhile, with Watson upgraded, the role of comic foil goes to Inspector Lestrade, repeatedly the butt of Holmes’ insults. “In another life, you’d have made an excellent criminal,” says the Scotland Yard man; “And you would’ve made an excellent policeman,” replies our hero scathingly. As one might expect of Guy Ritchie, much of Holmes is played for comedy, and Downey does well with the tossed-off one-liners (in Lord Blackwood’s prison cell, the walls strewn with Satanic symbols: “I love what you’ve done with the place”); Ritchie also can’t resist a few colourful rogues, notably a brick-wall-like, French-speaking giant known as ‘Dredger’, a kind of modern analogue to ‘Jaws’ in James Bond – and indeed the film comes off as a 19th-century Bond, with a set-piece action climax on Tower Bridge.
Why the fascination with Sherlock Holmes? What do all those 175 films have in common? Maybe it’s just that film is such a visceral medium, making Holmes’ detachment more fascinating: he’s aloof, like most superheroes. Sherlock Holmes is fine entertainment, though I wouldn’t want to oversell it: it’s not exactly personal filmmaking. Ritchie and Downey are in good form – but it must be said that this cool, stylish movie also has a touch of Sherlock’s admonition, when confronted by an old flame: “This mustn’t register on an emotional level.”
