Sherlock Holmes Screen Spotlight: Guy Ritchie’s Blockbuster Action Movie ‘Sherlock Holmes’
Guy Ritchie’s action-movie take on Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr., was a massive box-office hit that offered a fresh perspective on the most-adapted character in literary history.
In 2009, Guy Ritchie seemed to be an unlikely choice to direct a Sherlock Holmes movie. His previous films, including his early breakthroughs Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, feature plenty of crime, but they’re more about fighting and carousing than mystery-solving, and are told from the perspective of the criminals. The cerebral and refined Holmes doesn’t quite fit into Ritchie’s world.
Rather than changing Ritchie’s style to suit Holmes, though, 2009’s Sherlock Holmes changes Holmes to suit Ritchie’s style. The result was a massive box-office hit that sent Ritchie’s career in a new blockbuster-oriented direction and offered a fresh perspective on the most-adapted character in literary history. Played by Robert Downey Jr., the Holmes of Ritchie’s film is a brash, sarcastic man of action, although he retains the keen deductive skills of more traditional portrayals. He still plays the violin to relax, but now he also participates in underground fight clubs.
Ritchie and his collaborators give similar makeovers to various members of Holmes’ supporting cast, including his longtime associate Dr. John Watson (Jude Law), his love interest Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) and his police contact Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan). Even Holmes’ archenemy Prof. Moriarty is reimagined as a supervillain-style mastermind who is always operating from the literal shadows, although he’s not the film’s main antagonist.
That role falls to a newly invented character, the diabolical Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), whom Holmes and Watson help capture at the beginning of the movie, just before he sacrifices a young woman in what looks like a Satanic ritual. Sentenced to death for the murders of five other woman, Blackwood appears to rise from the grave following his execution, sending London into a panic as he enacts his evil plan from behind the scenes.
Sherlock Holmes is set in the Victorian era of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, but it’s not directly based on any of those stories, and the plot is closer to something out of a Mission: Impossible movie, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe films that Downey had recently begun appearing in. Blackwood’s convoluted plan encompasses nothing less than taking over the world, and Holmes and his allies are the only ones standing in the way.
Downey’s roguish performance as Holmes owes a lot to his hugely popular work as the MCU’s Iron Man, with a similar sense of bravado and snarky humor. The dynamic between Holmes and Irene, an expert thief and con artist, recalls a different superhero, Batman, and his relationship with the morally flexible Catwoman. That gives Sherlock Holmes more of a sensual charge than nearly any MCU movie, although the bond between Holmes and Watson carries just as much of a spark — along with plenty of homoerotic subtext.
The chemistry between Downey and Law is as strong as in any Holmes-Watson onscreen pairing, and Watson is an equal participant in the movie’s extensive fight scenes. Watson still gets flustered over his partner’s recklessness and reluctance to explain himself, but Law’s version of the character is almost always eager to follow Holmes into battle.
Ritchie stages a number of impressive, elaborate action sequences, including an almost Saw-style death trap from which Holmes and Watson must rescue Irene. The finale relies on the kind of ticking time bomb that has been an action-movie staple for decades, and Ritchie generates real suspense even though the main characters will obviously live to appear in the sequel.
That sequel, 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, skewed a little too heavily toward the large-scale spectacle side and away from any kind of mystery, but Ritchie’s initial film finds just the right balance. Holmes probably shouldn’t always be an action hero, but in this context, the unlikely combination works out exactly as planned.
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Josh Bell is a freelance writer and movie/TV critic based in Las Vegas. He has written about movies, TV, and pop culture for Vulture, IndieWire, Tom’s Guide, Inverse, Crooked Marquee, and more. With comedian Jason Harris, he co-hosts the podcast Awesome Movie Year.