Sherlock Holmes: Did We Really Need Another? One Word Answer: Downey, Jr! Or is That 2 Words?

Posted by ScuzzBuster

January 1, 2010

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: from 1984 to 1994 the definitive versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes literature was adapted by Grenada Television. The greatness of these adaptations was partly due to the faithfulness of the screenplays to the source material, but mostly due to the spellbinding performance of Jeremy Brett as Holmes [clip at review's end along with the trailer for the current film]. Ever since I spent my formative years balancing my Sherlock Holmes appreciation in the midst of dirty magazines, Star Trek and Friday Night Videos I have immediately turned my nose up at any attempt at a new adaptation of the work that would surface. It really took throwing one of our generation’s greatest living actors into the role to even nudge me over the line of considering it, even if it was opposite the astoundingly dull Jude Law in the role of Watson.

In spite of Robert Downey, Jr taking the lead, I was still lukewarm on this having any chance of being entertaining. The one thing that really makes my blood boil when someone brings Holmes out of the woodwork from time to time is to sell him as an action hero. This completely betrays everything that was compelling about the character and the stories to begin with. It’s no surprise that the new work tries to sell it this way, though the trailers are heavily skewed in that direction. And Jesus help us, only a miracle of biblical proportions could make Jude Law entertaining.

Let’s face it, we live in in a world where the only wildly successful adaptation of my favorite British detective is a stateside medical drama where Sherlock Holmes is played by a British comedian doing an American accent–for those clueless, like my wife and son through the first 4 years of the show’s run, Hugh Laurie’s House M.D. is a direct adaptation of Conan Doyle’s work only calling Holmes, “House” and making him an investigator of medical mysteries rather than criminal ones. For those still unconvinced, the show is structured nearly identical to Holmes down to House’s partner being Dr. Wilson rather than Holmes’ Dr. Watson, House living in apartment number 221 (Holmes living at 221b Baker St), and House being a hopeless drug addict (Holmes being a cocaine and morphine addict throughout the the entire series of Conan Doyle’s work). Basically, I pretty much had myself convinced that there was probably no real mainstream audience for a big budget faithful film adaptation of Sherlock Holmes these days. Now that I’ve seen the new Sherlock Holmes film, I’m still convinced that this is the case.

In other words, Sherlock Holmes is not an entirely faithful adaptation of the source material, but it does it justice and doesn’t betray it. While we’ve seen multiple permutations of Holmes over the years, Robert Downey, Jr and director Guy Ritchie give us a Holmes that fits right into what I’d like to believe was the original vision of the character. While being perhaps the most profound deductive genius on the planet, he’s tainted by being a slovenly, drug-addicted, arrogant jack ass. And in this film, one nice spin on the Holmes/Watson relationship is that in spite of Dr. Watson’s disgust and disapproval of Holmes’ drug habit, Watson himself is caught in an addiction of his own: Holmes himself. We see over the course of time that Watson has shared multiple cases with Holmes, but his relationship with the detective has always landed him in trouble. However, he cannot resist the draw of getting sucked into Holmes’ investigations. In this sense, we see Watson trying to propose marriage to young lady and move out of his Baker street office across from Holmes, yet he continually ends up following Holmes into one ugly situation after another knowing each time that is going to have grave social implications either to his relationship with his fiance-to-be, his status of not being wanted by the police, or his status as a living human being being lead by Holmes into life-threatening circumstances. Bravo to this twist on Watson, letting him be just as much of an addict as Sherlock himself.

Now before I get into what’s really important about Sherlock Holmes, I feel that I owe a concession to one of the main supporting roles here. As you most likely surmised from my earlier comments, I firmly believe that Jude Law is one of the world’s most overrated actors. I personally find him dreadfully dull and wooden, his only appeal really being to women and the chic-flick crowd. So let me make my most humble admission that this is absolutely the best work Jude Law has ever done that I have been able to witness. While I expected nothing more than a brilliant performance from Downey, Law countered him perfectly, played the character faithfully and held his own admirably opposite perhaps the greatest working actor today. One of the huge errors made in various adaptations of Sherlock Holmes is making Watson a bumbling fool. This is absolutely not the character that Doyle wrote about. This Watson is not written as a fool and Jude Law does not play him that way. I think the best compliment I can pay the actor in this case is that had I not seen his name in the cast list prior to attending the film, I would never have had the slightest clue that it was Jude Law in the role. His make-up obscures any and all of what we associate with Law’s look, he doesn’t sound like Jude Law and he completely disappears into the character. I actually must admit that for the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed a Jude Law performance. For Jude Law naysayers–which I pretty much have been since I first saw and was aware of him in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the best thing I can say about his stand out performance here is that there is absolutely nothing recognizably Jude Law in this film.

Now, the script. The script is good, if not classically faithful to Holmes canon. One of the things that is most appealing about the original Holmes works was that they were not structured like big-budget blockbusters. They were short stories about seemingly paradoxical circumstances and events that could only be unraveled and revealed as the cons they were by someone with astute deductive and logical reasoning skills. Sherlock Holmes was a savant whose mental prowess actually caused him to be emotionally and socially inadequate in all other aspects of his life. He turned to drugs to stimulate his mind when there was no adequate challenge in the form of a mystery before him. While he was on a case, he was the most effective human being alive, but between cases, he was an utter mess. In the original works, the longer he went between cases, the more of a wreck he would become. None of the original works really took on the scope of saving or changing the world, just unraveling knots that the average person doesn’t even realize were knots in the first place.

Much of classic Holmes, as in this film, is about elaborate con-artists that rely on human nature to chalk inexplicable things to acts of God or the supernatural to conceal nefarious plots to get away with any thing from petty theft to murder. In essence, almost a 19th century version of Scooby Doo, down to reveals that tantamount to the con-artists being unmasked to the tune of “and I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for that meddling Sherlock Holmes.” And such is the structure of the new film. Granted, liberties are taken. There’s much more action in this story than you would generally expect from Holmes. Though the original Holmes certainly had moments of action, the new version has more than a handful of right-crosses, explosions and large henchmen swinging heavy blunt instruments at our heroes. However, even in some of the film’s most nefarious moments, such as a Holme’s slinking down the to local underground street-fighting establishment to pound on some over-sized brutes for money, they weave the nature of Holmes into the action. There’s a plot device used multiple times where we have our hero in a situation where sheer brute strength aggression is seemingly going to completely negate any mental prowess the consulting detective has at his disposal, and they switch gears into flash of Holme’s ability to reason through anything as we follow his thoughts through how to overcome his large brutish foes starting with most effective initial blow to land on his opponent all the way through capping the instantaneously plan in his head with his assessment of physical recovery time from the injuries he is about to inflict. Definitely a nice mix of the spirit of Sherlock Holmes woven into something that is for a bit more jaded mainstream movie-goer. It actually all works, and even though the story itself is a bit grandiose for classic Conan Doyle, it all comes down a very satisfying conclusion.

Now down to the meat and potatoes of the film. What makes it all work along with making it one of the best films I’ve seen this year is an astoundingly brilliant, knock-you-on-your-ass performance by Robert Downey, Jr. I’m a sucker for good character work and good performances in film, so I try not to make this assessment lightly. No matter how good or how versatile you think Downey, Jr is, he’s never given a better performance than this. I still just can’t reconcile in my mind Downey’s fun turn in Iron Man, followed by an introspective character study in The Soloist, followed now by this. His performance is indescribable. As much as Jude Law disappeared into Dr. Watson in appearance and character, Robert Downey, Jr is nowhere to be seen. The face is familiar, but that’s about it. All I know is that I just spent two hours watching one of the most entertaining and fascinating characters I’ve ever seen on screen. This character was completely true to the grittiest, most grounded and flawed interpretation that Doyle created, yet it was completely unique. In my opening, I touted Jeremy Brett as the definitive Holmes. I’m not prepared to overturn that assessment. However, Downey’s portrayal is another shade of a completely true to the original interpretation of the character–at least the character as I have always seen it.

Nothing I’ve seen on screen this year comes close to what Robert Downey, Jr pulled off on Christmas Day. For me, I always peruse the Best Actor nominations when they hit and I teeter between the one’s I’ve seen and decide which one I liked the best, which one is my “emotional” favorite, which one broke the most ground, etc…the same political B.S. reasoning a lot of the academy voters go through when they cast their ballot. For my tiny mind, there’s nothing I saw that could convince me any actor achieved anything comparable to this in 2009. And that’s not to sell short some really great work that’s been done this year in the 40 or so flicks I’ve seen.

Ultimately, the only real drag on this film was Rachel McAdams as the Holmes nemesis Irene Adler. In classical canon, Adler only appeared in one story and held the regard of being only one of four people that ever outwitted Holmes. She was referenced in other stories, but never played a recurring or large part of the Holmes adventures. Here, McAdams plays a loosely adapted version of the character needlessly woven into a greater role in the life of Holmes in order to give the film a glint of a love interest for the main character. Again, another concession obviously made for the purposes of adding more mainstream appeal to the film. The only real problem with it here is that McAdams gives a fairly unspectacular and pedestrian performance. She is outclassed playing alongside Downey and sticks out like a sore thumb. This is not an insignificant issue I take with the film, especially considering I’ve had to give kudos to Jude Law just a couple of paragraphs ago. However, it’s probably not fair to McAdams to drop her into comparisons with Downey. However, for an on-screen conception of Holmes’ alleged female equal, she didn’t sell it for a second, unfortunately.

So my final assessment of yet another version of Sherlock Holmes? A definitive adaptation of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Not by a long shot. A highly enjoyable film? Absolutely. I have no qualms about recommending this to Holmes fans or those unfamiliar with the work. A thoughtful and clever script complimented by one of the best performances I’ve ever seen make this a bit more than just a great winter popcorn flick. If you’re riding the fence on this one, by all means purchase your ticket with all speed. If it doesn’t appeal to you in the slightest, it still probably won’t if you sit through it. In spite of still sitting on the 1980s and 90s adaptations as being THE definitive Holmes works, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is a blast and I loved it. It takes some liberties in the interests of giving it mainstream appeal for the drooling masses, but it showed it’s due reverence. Outside of that assesment, it’s just a plain fun and entertaining movie. For the 1980s and 90s Jeremy Brett adaptations, viewers in the U.S. most likely would have caught them woven into the PBS series called Mystery that adapted stories by classic mystery authors. They are available on DVD and most are available through immediate streaming to your PC or TV via Netflix. Check below for the trailer to the new film followed by classic Jeremy Brett Holmes.