‘Sherlock Holmes’ feels elementary

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Dr. Watson and the lads from Scotland Yard load
their pistols en route to a raid. Our hero, who has gotten there well
ahead of them thanks to his parkour (climbing/clambering) skills, kicks
the door down, “Dirty Harry” style.

This is not your great grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes. Guy Ritchie has turned the cerebral pipe-smoker into a Victorian England James Bond,
ripped and ready for action. He still has those intense powers of
observation, still has the fiddle (though he doesn’t play it), still
has his little drug habit.

And he still says, “The game’s afoot.”

But Ritchie yanks Holmes out of drawing rooms and hurls him into the muddy streets of 1880s London
in pursuit of a villain he thought he’d caught and seen hanged. And
Holmes matches wits with an American con artist named Irene (Rachel McAdams) who once outwitted him and stole his heart.

Robert Downey Jr. has fun with this latest foray into comic-book action, and Holmes’ banter with Watson (Jude Law)
is droll and witty, an exchange of equals, not the way that
relationship is traditionally played. This Watson is as two-fisted as
Holmes, an Army vet about to marry and leave their cluttered 221-B Baker St. digs behind.

Their quarry — an English lord with a gift for the black arts (Mark Strong, of “Rock’n Rolla”) who bewitches minds, sacrifices girls and apparently rises from the grave after the cops (Eddie Marsan is Inspector Lestrade) escort him to the gallows.

Strong has great menace and mystery about him (he’d
have made a great Holmes), and McAdams makes a playful foil for our
hero. But it is Downey’s eyes, always processing information, and his
quirky way with a line that sell this.

“Data, data data. I cannot make breakthroughs without data.”

Ritchie delivers PG-13 action (a first for him) and
lots of atmosphere in between brawls and shootouts. But the
script-by-committee unravels in a “Wild Wild West”/”League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” load of techno-hooey by the finale.

As much fun as it is to watch Downey as Holmes plan
and narrate his every punch in a fight and deduce his way to solutions,
they may have to take another crack at this “franchise” to really get
it right. This one feels somewhat “elementary.”

Sherlock Holmes

2 1/2 stars (out of 4)

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, Eddie Marsan

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes

Industry rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some startling images and a scene of suggestive material

Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.