by Aparna Mukhedkar

Created on: January 05, 2010   Last Updated: January 06, 2010

Sherlock Holmes

One of the most disappointing holiday movies of 2009 (among other unmentionables), was Guy Ritchie’s, “Sherlock Holmes”.  Touted as one of the most anticipated movies of the year, it fails to deliver as promised on every account.  Despite a blockbuster cast featuring, Robert Downey Jr. who essays the lead role, Jude Law as Dr. Watson and Rachel Mac Adams as Holmes’s ex-fiancee, Irene Adler, the film falls short of what it was slated to be - a thorough entertainer.  

From the very first frame, where a young girl is being ritually sacrificed to death by Lord Blackwood played by Mark Strong the film reveals its slow pace.  The repartee between Holmes and Watson is meant to be witty and elicit laughs. I do not recall one instance of that through the entire film.  Even the phrase “it’s elementary, my dear Watson” was missing from the movie.  Professor Moriarty, the famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes is reduced to a shadowy, dark figure whose face is never revealed throughout the movie.  Mercifully, he is mentioned at the end.  Sure, they are able to link him somehow to the main plot of the film, but even that was tepid at best. If they are planning on a storyline involving Moriarty in a sequel, I hope it will be a sharp, humorous, suspenseful mystery with a great plot and noteworthy dialogues.  Unlike the muddy cocktail we had to gulp down with Ritchie's latest offering in “Sherlock Holmes.”

The story of the film revolves around a secret society’s bid to thwart the evil designs of Lord Blackwood who dabbles in dark magic and is attempting to ‘create a new world order’.  He is being chased down by the intrepid team of Holmes and Watson along with the seemingly hapless Scotland Yard police. After a few fight scenes, Lord Blackwood is indeed captured and jailed.  After 3 months, he is hanged, and Watson even pronounces Blackwood dead.  However, he is resurrected and goes on a killing spree and the rest of the movie is about how Holmes uses his ‘powers of deduction’ to piece the mystery together, kill the villain and triumph in the end.

The script is trite and anyone who has read mystery novels can ‘deduce’ the plot after the second scene in the movie.  The resurrection of Lord Blackwood and the appearance of Irene Adler in Holmes’s apartment are clear giveaways to the rest of the story

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