Sherlock Holmes: Movie Review
Substance over Shadow
By June Williams
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Just as it pains me to pan poorly made mega million dollar movie productions, it gives me joy to share the news of a wonderful addition to film history. Before I saw this most recent version of Sherlock Holmes I was concerned that the most intelligent hero of literature was going to be dumbed down, sexed up and generally rolled about in the gutter. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh OK so Robert Downey Jr. is more of a sexy rake than Basil Rathbone, who many claim to have been the definitive film Holmes. Yet is it so terrible to have a brilliant eccentric being portrayed by someone that is also hot? I don’t think so.
Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, not only made my Christmas season viewing pleasurable, they made strides in filmmaking that I haven’t seen since the first Matrix movie or maybe Fight Club. Not because the cinematography was so technologically advanced, but rather because we are viewing through the lens that the director and creator of the film has crafted for us. We are invited, no, not so much invited as compelled to see the action through the mind’s eye of Mr. Holmes himself. Everything is perfect from the look and feel of 19th Century London to the steampunk trappings that pepper the film. The actors are superb but had they not been given witty lines to say in a script that was worthy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle then it would be as Holmes said “like trying to make bricks without clay”. They were given the clay, the directions for building the structure, the ovens to bake them and the mortar to put it all together. They did so beautifully. There are no gaping plot holes through which you could drive truck and artillery. Instead, we find a brilliantly crafted jigsaw puzzle which in the end fits together seamlessly. I will not spoil you in the least. It would be criminal to do so with a film like this. So hurry out and spend you cash be it hard earned or ill gotten and see Sherlock Holmes.
Now if only Robert Downey Jr can keep from ending up in jail maybe we will get a whole bunch of new Sherlock Holmes movies. I would sure like it.
I can’t wait to see this. This movie combines one of my favorite actors and a great subject and genre.
Thanks for the review.
Excellent review. I loved how we were given what i am calling “Premonition Time” (named in honor of the Matrix’s Bullet Time). for the first time ever we are invited inside the head of Sherlock Holmes and given the line of thought, the logic of how he sees things and reasons them out just before they happen. With this brilliant technique we can now finally understand Holmes in a whole new way.
I figured it. and be forewarned, for here there be spoilers….and bad spelling…
In the Sherlock Homes squeal I am sure there will be we will learn that Mary, John Watson’s fiance is in fact not only the person who made off with the bit of advanced technology at the end of the movie but is also Moriarty. Here’s how:
1. As Waston’s fiance she could have been privy to all their activities and figuring. Her getting close to John was a means to an end, she did it just to get close to Holmes.
2. Holmes pointed out at the dinner table in the restaurant that she had ink splattered on her earlobe no doubt having gotten there via a temper tantrum from a naughty student of her’s thereby making her a teacher of some sort. She corrected him and claimed to be a governess, but a teacher in the time of Victorian England would have been called a professor, as in /Professor Moriarty./ She said ‘governess’ and Holmes ran with it because it is logical and very Oskam’s Razor, the very food Holmes lives on. Additionally, they overly zoomed in on the “M” on the carriage bag that the trigger mechanism was placed in. “M” could be for Moriarty but it is also for “Mary.”
3. At the end of the movie when Holmes was speaking to Irene she was playing the pronoun game. She never said “he or him,” her sentences were devoid of pronouns. The closest she came was when she said “a real professor Moriarty is.”
4. Last and the only obviously bit of melodrama in the whole movie was when Mary pointed out that Godwin, the bulldog, was paralyzed, again, in the midst of Holmes figuring aloud, a step that is nearly critical to his thought process.
That’s it.
Lomax
Mary might, just might be working for Moriarty but she is not a he and Moriarty is 100 percent male. Something that I noticed while watching the film was the small steam riverboat they used on the Thames was named Lucy and in fact the name Lucy showed up in a couple of spots. As a Holmes fan myself I couldn’t help think of A Study in Scarlet, the very first Sherlock Holmes story, which deals in a crime that begins in the American West and has a character named Lucy Ferrier who is a key player in the mystery. It might have just been a coincidence but because so much attention was given to detail in this movie I would not be shocked to find that this is an Easter Egg.
I have been considering seeing this every since I saw the first trailer. However, the trailer does make it seemed like it could make a joke out of a classic. I’m glad to hear you say that it isn’t all sexed up, and I’m excited to catch the ending.