Sherlock Holmes - 8/10 - Well, this movie was something of a surprise. I had nothing but contempt for this movie when I saw the original trailer, as it looked like a betrayal of everything about the Sherlock Holmes character I had grown fond of over the years. The trailer made it look like this was going to be an action movie, with Sherlock being something of a James Bond/Indiana Jones-type character. Well, after seeing the movie I can safely say that of my problems with this movie, Robert Downey Jr.'s take on Holmes is not among them. He's arrogant, intelligent, borderline-insane, socially inept, and has a natural comradery with (a strangely young & fit) Dr. Watson. In other words, he's Sherlock Holmes, though a more-blunt form of the character. My only problem with his performance is that he tends to speak many of his lines just under his breath, which makes him very difficult to understand at times and making me think I needed subtitles. Up until the end, I had serious issues with the plot (especially the way it pretends to be "science vs. the supernatural", a growing trend with modern Holmes stories), but those got resolved to my satisfaction in the final 10 minutes of the movie in a very Holmes-ian way.
My big problem with this movie is that this is a fairly straightforward story that is hard to follow only because it is edited in a confusing way. In fact, the movie in general seems to be constantly at war with its cinematographer. The story is clearly slow, methodical, and reliant on the audience paying attention to small details...but the cinematography is fond of randomly speeding up to portray it as a much-faster movie, which makes catching those small details and dialog difficult. This is especially annoying in the fight scenes where the movie likes to slow down and speed up time at random intervals that remind me irritatingly of that POS Watchmen movie. The movie is also somewhat inconsistent in how much familiarity it seems to assume we have with the character. For instance, it assumes we know who Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade are and directly references previous Holmes adventures in places, but for some bizarre reason thinks we need to see the same lengthy sequence twice just to "let us in" on the rather obvious fact that Holmes in one scene is in disguise.
The movie does get a gold star for an excellent set-up for the next movie, though.
Topic: Rate the last movie you've seen (Read 1544548 times)
