Apparently, in a former Madge-free life, Guy Ritchie used to be a furniture removal man, and after witnessing his latest stab at directing, 'Sherlock Holmes', I'd recommend that he log on to Autotrader.co.uk and see if he can find a nice, low mileage van for sale.It's an appalling film. The plot, what little there is, can only be described as tenuous at best, and fails to take the viewer on any kind of journey at all. I felt completely disengaged and couldn't really figure out what the bad guy was attempting to do or why I should really care in the first place.
The film also suffers from miscasting of truly epic proportions. A box office draw he may be, but wise-cracking Robert Downey Jr is terrible as the worlds most famous aristocratic detective. In fact a swap in roles between him and Dr Watson, played by Jude Law, would have been preferable. Even better still would have been to let the excellent Mark Strong, a man seemingly born to play Sherlock Holmes, don the deerstalker and wander around muttering "Elementary etc etc" under his breath, rather than play the one dimensional villain, Lord Blackwood.
The problem, as I see it, is that Guy Ritchie only knows how to make one kind of film, a "cool" London gangster flick featuring guns, explosions and lots of comedic "cockney banter".
'Sherlock Holmes' movies on the other hand, as typified by the great Basil Rathbone, were always a cerebral, intellectual crime thriller, and Holmes always defeated his enemies with the power of his mind, not with his pugilistic skills.
There are just some film franchises that cannot survive a Hollywood makeover.
The game is most definitely not afoot.
Fail.
