Actors:Eddie Marsan, Geraldine James, Hans Matheson, Jude Law, Kelly Reilly, Mark Strong, Rachel McAdams, Robert Downey Jr., Robert Maillet, William. The banter between Holmes and Watson isn’t as witty as it should be, but the detective’s lone mutterings, especially his deductions, are fun. Eccentric consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson battle to bring down a new nemesis and unravel a deadly plot that could destroy England. Ritchie’s ‘Sherlock Holmes’ is effective as a caricatured comedy adventure and shows some fidelity to Arthur Conan Doyle, especially in Downey Jr’s portrayal of the eccentric but cold-hearted Holmes.
The villain hangs, but, for Holmes and Watson, this is just the start of a series of fights, rescues, escapes and revelations, all cloaked in creaky supernatural mumbo jumbo.
In this early scene, Ritchie’s Holmes reveals himself as a physical titan in a witty interlude in which we witness in slow motion the microscopic details of his plan to incapacitate an assailant by brute force.
They discover an aristocrat, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), in the middle of a ritualistic murder of a young woman. Plunging into their careers mid-flow, we watch as they confront a conspiracy of national proportions. Here, Robert Downey Jr draws on his wild-eyed side to play the detective, while Jude Law assumes the more sober clothes of his sidekick, Dr Watson. Shed of his tedious infatuation with off-the-peg London gangsters, Ritchie proves a competent teller of the fast-paced, not po-faced yarn. Guy Ritchie the director and Guy Ritchie the screenwriter part ways for this latest spin on the Sherlock Holmes story, and if separation turns into divorce it would be no bad thing, at least on the evidence of this big-hearted, atmospheric entertainment.