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There have been over 30 film and tv versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.  The general story is familiar to most audiences. Holmes is a hypercerebral detective, whose sous-detective is the bumbling Dr. John Watson.  Holmes has an equally brilliant brother, Mycroft, who while working for the British Government plays a very small role in a couple of the books.  Additionally, Holmes arch-enemy, Dr. Moriority, is equally as brilliant, but evil in devious ways.  These books, written in the late Victorian period, reflect the simplistic notions of good and evil, and the characters of Holmes and Moriority depict such respectively. 

The Conan Doyle stories are uncomplicated procedural detective novels.  Each is highly structured, leaving clues that only Holmes perceives (although a regular reader knows where to look).  Additionally, Holmes has an unusually perceptive eye and is quite wise about human nature.  Hence, he makes many of his startling inferences by understanding his nemeses and predicting how they will behave and respond to the stress of their crimes.

Although he is a contemporary of both Dickens and Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle does not write in the deeply pyschological manner of either of those.  Instead, he takes a more cognitive or reflexive approach to the behavior of his enemies.

When film goers think of Sherlock Holmes films, they must refer to the role as played by the late Basil Rathbone, who played in no less than 15 Sherlock Holmes movies, with Nigel Bruce portraying the portly Dr. Watson.  Having seen many of these films with them in the lead, it is hard to adjust to newer interpretations.

That noted, the current versions, with Robert Downey and Jude Law fail on a variety of levels.  They do establish the same comraderie as depicted between Rathbone and Bruce, but on a very different plane.  Where Rathbone is brilliant and aloof, Downey is all action.  Somewhere along the line, in the current version, Holmes has learned karate, ju-jitsu, and tikwando.  Most of the current version is filled with physical fights, including shoot outs.   Granted the special effects move the plot along and there are some funny scenes which involve howitzers (you have to see it to understand how canon can be funny). 

Stephen Fry plays Mycroft Holmes and is terrifically eccentric.  If you know Stephen Fry from either his other movies or from his quiz show on BBC America, you will know this eccentricity fits him perfectly.

Frankly, the movie reminded me of Iron Man set in Victorian England.

In this version, Holmes uses physical force far more often than his intellect.  And even the parts that demonstrate his extraordinary powers of observation were almost surreal.  The director, Guy Ritchie, slowed the action to show how Holmes perceived what others had missed.  And the cutting was so fast that the audience barely had a chance to register what it was that Holmes observed.  Some of the fun of the older films was discovering along with Holmes, sometimes as he explained it to Watson, how he induced from small clues larger directions and plans of the criminals.

This is mostly another action film, and departs from the classical Holmes movies in a big way.  It lacks the participation of the audience in solving the crime.  Hence, the audience is simply passive to the action.  In the original series, made in the 30’s and 40’s engaged the audiences in the story much more so.

Overall, this is an entertaining film and enjoyable.  As I noted above, you might be better off watching the Basil Rathbone films, some of which are available on Netflix.