Film: Sherlock Holmes

I never mind a challenge when watching a film - I like having to concentrate on every little detail and always strive to get to the ending before the story itself does. But this kind of challenge in film is only good if it pays off with a good reward, and unfortunately Sherlock Holmes doesn't quite deliver. After you've managed to decipher all the long words and fast paced and gag-filled script there isn't much of a deep plot; and all the really hard bits are explained away with things like "bribery" and "coat hooks".

Robert Downey Jr is ace, as he always is, and perfect for the super-aware and slightly autistic Holmes. Jude Law is less of a gem in this movie and the rest of the cast manage to keep up to a minimum level. The film manages to pull off the re-imagining of Holmes as a violent play boy rather than gentleman (there's plenty of token Guy Ritchie during the fight scenes) and it all fitted pretty well. Old London was represented okay in a fantastical way but was hardly authentic.

Overall the film was pretty enjoyable but nevertheless a bit of a wasted opportunity what with the lack of any real payload (Moriarty has been saved for a sequel it seems). If the plot had as much intelligence as Sherlock himself then this could have been a cracker; but the real irony is how Guy Ritchie's other films manage to be much more smarter using much less vocabulary.