Hot Picks
|
|
|
Sherlock Holmes
USA / Germany 2009
produced by Susan Downey, Dan Lin, Joel Silver, Lionel Wigram, Bruce Berman (executive), Michael Tadross (executive) for Village Roadshow, Silver Pictures, Wigram Productions/Warner Brothers
directed by Guy Ritchie
starring Robert Downey jr, Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, Eddie Marsan, Robert Maillet, Geraldine James, Kelly Reilly, William Houston, Hans Matheson, James Fox, William Hope, Clive Russell, Oran Gurel, David Garrick, Kylie Hutchinson, Andrew Brooke, Tom Watt, John Kearney, Sebastian Abineri, Jonathan Gabriel Robbins, James A.Stephens, Terry Taplin, Bronagh Gallagher, Ed Tolputt, Joe Egan, Jefferson Hall, Miles Jupp, Marn Davies, Andrew Greenough, Ned Dennehy, Martin Ewens, Amanda Grace Johnson
screen story by Lionel Wigram, Michael Robert Johnson, screenplay by Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, Simon Kinberg, based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, music by Hanns Zimmer
Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey jr), Irene Adler
review by Mike Haberfelner
|
|
|
|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
Related stuff you might want!!!(commissions earned) |
|
|
|
Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) has just been captured and executed for a
series of ritualistic murders thanks to Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey
jr), but his triumph is a bitter one because it was his last case his
trusted friend Watson (Jude Law) has agreed to see through with him before
moving out of their joint apartment and getting married to Mary (Kelly
Reilly), his longtime fiancée Holmes rejects to even meet. Following the
solution of the Blackwood-case, Holmes locks himself away in his room,
brooding ... until it is reported that Blackwood has risen from the grave,
and when opening his coffin, indeed another man is found inside - and that
despite the fact that Holmes saw him hang and Watson made sure he was dead
personally. Holmes now runs around town to collect evidence, and somehow
he always manages to coerce Watson into assisting him, even if that might
throw a spanner into Watson's marriage plans. Eventually, Holmes comes
across the only woman he ever loved, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a
master criminal who has managed to trick Holmes not once but twice. She
was hired by a certain (unseen) professor Moriarty to keep an eye on
Holmes, but she more and more falls in love with him instead. After much
to and fro that basically leads to the conclusion that Blackwood is still
alive and the leader of a secret black magic brotherhood that wants to
take over parliament, and to a warrant issued for the arrest of Sherlock
Holmes, Holmes finds out that Blackwood wants to poison parliament -
something that's supposed to look like black magic. However, Holmes
doesn't believe into such mumbojumbo and soon finds a machine in the
sewers beneath parliament that's supposed to do the trick. While battling
the enemy, Holmes, Watson and Irene Adler manage to disarm the machine,
but then Irene takes off with the poisoned gas containers, and while
pursuing her, Holmes has to fight Blackwood, too, who ends his life hanged
by the neck on top of the still under construction Tower Bridge, but not
before Holmes explains everything away, including how Blackwood faked his
own death, and how he used elaborate conjuring tricks to make everyone
believe he was a black magician. Holmes manages to capture Irene Adler,
take the containers from her and put handcuffs on her - but then he
realizes she has been only used by Moriarty as a distraction, and thus he
provides her with the means for escape as well ... I'm of two
minds about this movie: On one hand it's very sloppily written, lacks
narrative stringency, pulls explanations out of the hat left and right,
and confronts Holmes with a ridiculously big case to solve, a case that's
supposed to be scary and esoteric but is too simple to figure out if you
have seen only one other Sherlock Holmes, mystery, actually.
On top of that, the film tries to be a reinterpretation of the Sherlock
Holmes of old, but quite frankly, it hasn't anything new to say
about the character that hasn't said before - the reinterpretation
suggests a browse through a reference book more than a serious
investigation of the character. And whatever homoerotic and woman-hating
tendencies Holmes seems to show at first, they are all of a sudden blown
away when Irene Adler enters the picture, and the lovestory between him
and her is nothing short of cheesy. Also, depicting Holmes as a skilled
martial artist is a bit much, especially when in other scenes he comes
across as particularly clumsy ... That all said though, on the other
hand, the film isn't bad either: Its direction is well-paced without
losing itself in stuff like machinegun editing and the like, its approach
to the source material is rather light-hearted and likeable, and the cast
is pretty much first rate - and even if Robert Downey does not convince as
Sherlock Holmes, he convinces as an actor and almost effortlessly carries
the movie. In all, it's certainly not the Sherlock Holmes-movie
we have all been waiting for or couldn't do without, but it's ok
entertainment.
|