Saw it, liked it. It reminded me of Iron Man, which I suppose is an obvious connection to make, but I think it was better than Iron Man, because it was tightly plotted, it had more than one good actor in it, and the villain was interesting. The buddy-cop vibe was easily the best thing about the film. Guy Ritchie doesn't keep Holmes and Watson apart for very long stretches at a time and its to the film's benefit. All the actors had good chemistry, and even the nameless and minor characters felt lived-in. I thought it was a bang-up job. I went in dubious at turning the cerebral screen-based Sherlock Holmes most kids of my age are familiar with into a balls-out Indiana Jones type but it worked pretty damn well (though as long as we're on the subject of charismatic actors in similar roles, Holmes is a lot more like Han Solo).
I didn't really care for the slow-mo sequences, or at least, I would've liked it if one of them didn't go exactly as planned. The fight with the three thugs in the middle of the movie would've been a good candidate. Guy Ritchie can film close combat sequences with a sense of space and logic - you know where everyone is in relation to everyone else at any one time, and that's something you can easily fuck up, if you're Chris Nolan at least. Overall I feel like Ritchie actually reined in his tendency for excess, which is good as like many of his post-Tarantino contemporaries he doesn't have QT's fidgety brightness that makes constant self-indulgence and style-is-substance verve anything less than completely fucking obnoxious (which Ritchie has been, frequently, in the recent past). Boy did good.
Now to the SPOILERS.
There's not a lot of the mystery to the film and I think that's just fine, frankly. I went into this (as I assume a lot of people have) with a keen eye for the con, and they didn't really try, which is, again, fine. The whole black magic angle is never meant to be convincing - we know that at the end Holmes is going to unravel all of Blackwood's tricks in a monologue at some point in true detective fashion, and most of the tricks are themselves pretty classic (faking of death though self-induced paralysis, poisoning bathwater, rigged gun etc.) They did include a nice little feat of misdirection in including Professor Moriarty. Having not thought about it (and the rumors of Brad Pitt's assumption of the role in the already-greenlit sequel) much before seeing the film, I simply assumed that the shadowy figure was of the Order from whence Blackwood came and that said Order was in league with Blackwood from the start. I turned out to be right but not in the right way. But they gave away the identity of the shadowy figure as soon as Holmes first mentioned the chalk on his jacket.
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Topic: Elementary, my dear Watson aka Sherlock Holmes - The Movie (Read 17407 times)