I have long been a Sherlock Holmes fan. As a boy I moved on to Conan Doyle’s novels after exhausting the derring-do and dirty tricks of John Buchan.
But I had mixed feelings about seeing the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I had always thought the stories and characters very English and was not sure how it would fare with the Hollywood treatment.
If Robert Downey jnr did not fit the stereotypical Sherlock then Jude Law was as far removed as it is possible to get from the loyal, dependable, if slightly fusty Watson.
And what of the story? I could not have been more wrong. The game was very definitely afoot. It was different, with the two main characters more all-action heroes than ascetic problem-solvers.
Still, as Holmes said so often, they made the theory fit the facts, rather than the facts fit the theory; something modern policing – and a few journalists I have known – could still learn from.
The action and the plot was fast-paced, which helped to hide a few somewhat fantastic twists and turns.
The supporting cast were all fine and one of the stars was definitely London itself. It was made to look genuinely dark and satanic and very much the sort of place which would be inhabited by villains and evil masterminds.
All the real scene-grabbing moments, though, were between Holmes and Watson as the two characters bristled with energy and sometimes just bristled.
All-in-all a twenty-first century take on the classic heroes which works on every level and is obviously the first of a few such movies.
Go see it.