Between Reviews: The Fabulous Baker St. Boys
THE FABULOUS BAKER ST. BOYS
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law make an entertaining odd-couple in “Sherlock Holmes,” and almost make you overlook the rather generic nature of the action blockbuster they’re trapped in.
JAN 10, 2010 – THE MYSTERIES OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE are, above all, a celebration of cerebration – an irksome reality that sits well neither with twitchy modern audiences nor with the director Guy Ritchie, whose style hinges on the humble credo of cramming in as many distinct frames as possible between consecutive blinks of the human eye. After all, once you’re done with the wide angle shot of Sherlock Holmes lost in thought, followed by a close-up of being lost in thought and perhaps a top-angle view of being lost in thought, what else is there in a filmmaker’s arsenal to justify dragging the venerated detective to movie screens in the millennium? Ritchie, therefore, opts for a most practical solution – Holmes, today, isn’t so much super sleuth as superhero, with Dr. Watson the equivalent of the long-suffering butler-sidekick.
Fans of the definitive television series headlined by Jeremy Brett are, in short, advised to hold on to their armrests. As portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., the most distinguished denizen of Baker Street is a droll creature whose physical reflexes are on par with his mental faculties. (Doyle hinted at these self-defense skills; Ritchie makes them the centerpiece of his conception of the character.) Thanks to Brett, we imagine a Holmes of height and hauteur – but here, the detective is a compact cad, unhesitant about playing cute to the gallery with a wide variety of quips. (Eyes resting on Watson, who may be strangulating a villain far beyond the call of duty, Holmes deadpans, “I think that’s quite enough. You are a doctor, after all!”) He uses his fists as felicitously as he employs his wits. One of the film’s most enjoyable conceits is its depiction of Holmes mentally choreographing moves before laying a finger on an opponent – after which, he erupts into an action-choreography blur. (I’m assuming Ritchie’s next project is Miss Marple: Tomb Raider.)
Befitting our age – where, clearly, even the wheel is a ripe candidate for reinvention – this is Holmes as a rock-star naughty-boy, as fidgety as the frames he’s in. (You catch him making plans to obtain tickets for Don Giovanni, and you wonder how he’s going to last through the fat lady’s final notes.) Ritchie draws from the templates of both the digital-era action epic and the Judd Apatow bromance. In between the money shots – an under-construction ship careening off its platform and plunging into the Thames; a hair’s-breadth rescue at a meat-processing assembly line – are scenes where Dr. Watson (Jude Law) carries on, like a harried housewife, about having to put up with his companion’s tries on the violin at three in the morning. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise when, after purchasing a ring for his fiancée, Mary Morstan, he leaves it behind without a thought as he lunges after Holmes in yet another adventure. (In a most amusing moment, when Holmes, offering his partner as an example, says, “Take Watson…,” Morstan looks him in the eye and replies firmly, “I intend to.” The unspoken signals couldn’t be clearer.)
Sherlock Holmes is all over the place – rambunctious and ramshackle, though not exactly a failure. The actors hurl themselves into the hokum with contagious enthusiasm, and there’s definitely evidence of a lot of fun being had behind the scenes. (The costume designer’s credit in the end titles flashes against a still of the naked protagonist. Plus, there appear to be cheeky references to contemporaneous fiction – Holmes muses about going “further down the rabbit hole than I intended,” and a jet-black bird that serves as a sinister portent could well be Poe’s raven.) And yet, it’s hard to shake off the frustration, by the film’s close, that even this most unique of detectives is constrained by the manipulations of a generic screenplay (with a grimacing villain who, like other members of his ilk, wants nothing more than to rule the world). Ritchie grapples with an elementary dilemma: How to keep the spirit of Holmes alive and still retain the attention of a modern audience to whom the character is but a nominal pop-culture artifact, some sort of James Bond of long-long-ago?
As Casino Royale did with double-oh-seven – shucking off the decorative deadweight and returning to the lean, mean Bond of Ian Fleming’s imagination – I wondered if Ritchie might locate a median, an approach that would straddle the purist and the populist. Instead, we get a fitfully entertaining action-adventure that’s typically fussy and frantic, with appeasements in the form of token invocations of Holmesian mythology. (Among the names dropped are Irene Adler, Mycroft Holmes, Inspector Lestrade, and of course, Professor Moriarty, who anticipates the inevitable sequel.) Remove the hansom cabs from the cobblestone streets, and this is just another buddy movie saddled with exclamations and explosions, and appropriately defanged in order to appeal to all ages, all demographics. Why does every spectacle, these days, brandish its blandness with such nonchalance? Where do directors like Ritchie misplace their edge when commissioned to craft franchise-spawning blockbusters? Why not hint, in a throwaway shot, that Holmes, the lovably wholesome rascal, isn’t beyond injecting his veins with a seven-per-cent solution of cocaine? These are Hollywood mysteries beyond the deductive powers of even this protagonist.
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Comment from anon: Holmes was the most fun I had at the movies in a long time. Well, at least since Inglorious Basterds. I was willing to overlook the plot holes, the ridiculous premise, the super sleuth as super hero reworking etc. For once Watson is not just a willing side-kick. The only thing that disappointed me was the lack of chemistry between Holmes and Adler and the Adler seducing Holmes bit that appeared in the trailer (atleast the one I saw) missing here – she just gives him a loaded drink and handcuffs him to the bed instead.
Guess that makes three of us who have seen the movie , going by the number of comments on this page
. The movie left me with mixed feelings, on one level I wanted the old Holmes back .The deerstalker hats, the “elementary” proclamations,heck bring back Jeremy Bratt (or atleast Hugh Laurie as the initial rumors put it )from the dead.But on a different level , I knew that the same old Holmes translated on the big screen , even in an original story might have left me bored.The books might have aged well but the movies/serials unfortunately leave me bored stiff at the best of times.So ,I would say , all things considered , I had a fun time.If only they had a better story to hang this movie on!Brad Pitt as Moriarty with an English accent might be a fun watch , dotcha think ? 
Dont you think Guy Ritchie seems to be running out of ideas? This movie was similar to his gangster movies. As you said, the cramming in of numerous frames, the scene of Holmes fighting in the ring (Pitt in Snatch), the non linear way of telling the story and even the “mental choregoraphy” i think i’ve seen in one of his earlier movies…It was highly enjoyable but it had a sense of deja vu.
This movie also left me with an empty feeling in the end, when Holmes begins explaining how Blackwood made the “magic” happen. Even though i was looking forward to see how he unraveled the mystery.
It felt like watching the show where they show you how the street magicians really do their tricks. The answers are always simple, but by the end you’re left thinking maybe you shouldnt have seen the show coz the beauty/mysticism of the trick is lost.
I am really rambling here. Hope im making sense
anon: Well, she does seduce him, right? That’s how he ends up on the bed in that, uh, compromising position? BTW, wonder what ol’ Doyle would have thought of the kind of sex Adler (and Holmes) had in mind at this instant!
Bala: Yeah, I too thought there’d be more comments here compared to the two lame Hindi film reviews — but you never know. I would have loved to see Hugh Laurie as Holmes, though clearly he wouldn’t be the first choice for an action blockbuster. Then again, before Iron Man, who would’ve thought Downey Jr would be an action star?
Deepak: Frankly, I’ve never been much of a Guy Ritchie fan. I know he’s often compared to Tarantino, but I wouldn’t even place them in the same universe. This film worked because of its stars (and *despite* the overall blandness of Ritchie’s vision).
Well, about “the beauty/mysticism of the trick” being lost, that’s the case of, say, The Hound of Baskervilles and so on, right? The rational explanation behind the supernatural (phosphorus, in this case)? But I agree that when the explanation is presented so frantically, as opposed to being gradually unraveled, there is a bit of feeling cheated. But then, you can’t expect that kind of stately elegance in a hyper-edited modern-day blockbuster movie.
I liked how RDJ played the violin in Sherlock Holmes. Strumming as and when he likes to play as someone would if he had learnt the instrument for only the love of the instrument and not elaborate Paganini styled bow strokes .
Reg. “..most enjoyable conceits is its depiction of Holmes mentally choreographing moves ”
I was hoping for this exposition to payoff later on in the story. Where for once things do not go the way he mentally choreographed them because of a possible surprise move by the opponent.
“Why does every spectacle, these days, brandish its blandness with such nonchalance? ”
Yeah. I would ve loved it if there was much more at stake and if it was crammed with more info, along with the action scenes which I loved by the way.The same thing happened to Star Trek.
“I’ve never been much of a Guy Ritchie fan…..”
I have seen only one Guy Ritchie movie-’revolver’-at a personal level, it truly fascinated me, especially the aphorisms shown at the beginning and the way relation is established between them and the lives of the individuals involved; in a rather outlandish manner, was not really surprised when I found how big a flop it was. Your opinions on the movie BR?
By the way, I plan to catch ‘lock, stock and two smoking barrels’ soon
@Hari: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is his best movie imho. If you like that, then you should also probably watch Snatch and RocknRolla (Although they are not as good as LSTSB)
Left my comment incomplete…..I intended to say that I found myself drawing parallels between ‘revolver’ and ‘no smoking’(in a rather outlandish manner since both deal with a battle ONE man fights with his own inner self, his desires and his own way of looking at things and struggles in the process, in both cases, quite a lot was left to interpretation and both the movies involved considerable amount of phantasmagoria-something I acquired a taste for only after watching ‘no smoking’)
I was expecting Adler outwitting Holmes in the end. But, she ended up being a damsel-in-distress. A touch disappointing.
Mambazha Manidhan: Reg. “I liked how RDJ played the violin” – and it was great how these bizarre pluckings were extrapolated into an equally bizarre scores, with strings dominating and yet not in the traditional symphonic-cascade fashion. It was almost like the score for a country-music bio and it underscored the action in a fantastically eccentric manner, like how the banjo music gave a fresh “colour” to the action scenes in Bonnie and Clyde.