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Sherlock Holmes [Review]
Jan. 5th, 2012 11:04 amThe problem with writing reviews of films I enjoy is that it's really difficult to be rude about them, and being rude is half all the fun. The She-David and I will wander out of the cinema and she'll gaze at me with those bright, adoring, doe-like but curiously mindless eyes of hers and say something like "That was a really good film! Are you going to write about it on that bloggy thingy you do?" And I think and say no, I won't, becuase all of the entertainingly rude things I thought of to say before I even saw it have been invalidated.
Which was why watching the first of Guy Richies' Sherlock Holmes films was such a pleasure; it was rubbish. They captured the look and feel of victorian London wonderfully, right down to little details like Watson wearing the right uniform (officer in the Berkshire regiment) so it was a pleasure to look at, and then botched it royally with a delightfully rubbish plot. A plot which, had the villain not written Sherlock Holmes a note basically saying "Dear Mister Holmes, I'm going to commit a crime, try and stop me, ner", wouldn't have happened. In fact, had the villain not decided to tell Sherlock Holmes he was a villain and then hammed it up rather than just getting on with his plan then nobody would have known he was a wrong 'un until he'd conquered the world.
I can have a lot of fun with a plot like that.
And that brings me to the big problem I had with the sequel Game of Shadows. You see, as I sat munching handfuls of popcorn the thought which kept springing into my head was This film is far better than it has any right to be. And it is. For a Hollywood blockbuster, it has that rarest of rare things; a plot which makes sense and a villain who isn't a complete pillock. Indeed, the villain - Professor Moriarty, who is almost certainly the most overused villain ever - just cracks on with his evil plans whilst making periodic and apparently genuine attempts at killing Holmes. There's some minor weaknesses, such as a sequence in which Holmes disguises himself (badly) as a woman which everyone else in the cinema seemed to find hilarious but I feared was the point the film would jump the shark (and was relieved to be wrong), but in the main as I sat there the good in the film far outweighed the bad.
It's wierd, because I've not previously been a huge fan of Richie's films; Snatch was kinda okay and Revolver was unwatchable, but I couldn't help but think that he's suddenly got the whole filmmaking process. There's a great fight with a Cossack assassin at the start which is one of the best-choreographed fight sequences I've seen this year (and I do like me my fight scenes) and even the slow down/speed up camerawork which is has been de rigeur for action sequences ever since 300 works. The closing reel, in which the end-of-wave fight between Holmes & Moriarty is an actual battle of wits rather than the standard Hollywood trope of running fight in a burning/collapsing building, even works better than I expected.
So it is that, for once, I can actually say in a review that this is a film worth seeing. I feel like I've betrayed myself a bit.
Of course, depite the title it has absolutely nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, but you already knew that, right?
Which was why watching the first of Guy Richies' Sherlock Holmes films was such a pleasure; it was rubbish. They captured the look and feel of victorian London wonderfully, right down to little details like Watson wearing the right uniform (officer in the Berkshire regiment) so it was a pleasure to look at, and then botched it royally with a delightfully rubbish plot. A plot which, had the villain not written Sherlock Holmes a note basically saying "Dear Mister Holmes, I'm going to commit a crime, try and stop me, ner", wouldn't have happened. In fact, had the villain not decided to tell Sherlock Holmes he was a villain and then hammed it up rather than just getting on with his plan then nobody would have known he was a wrong 'un until he'd conquered the world.
I can have a lot of fun with a plot like that.
And that brings me to the big problem I had with the sequel Game of Shadows. You see, as I sat munching handfuls of popcorn the thought which kept springing into my head was This film is far better than it has any right to be. And it is. For a Hollywood blockbuster, it has that rarest of rare things; a plot which makes sense and a villain who isn't a complete pillock. Indeed, the villain - Professor Moriarty, who is almost certainly the most overused villain ever - just cracks on with his evil plans whilst making periodic and apparently genuine attempts at killing Holmes. There's some minor weaknesses, such as a sequence in which Holmes disguises himself (badly) as a woman which everyone else in the cinema seemed to find hilarious but I feared was the point the film would jump the shark (and was relieved to be wrong), but in the main as I sat there the good in the film far outweighed the bad.
It's wierd, because I've not previously been a huge fan of Richie's films; Snatch was kinda okay and Revolver was unwatchable, but I couldn't help but think that he's suddenly got the whole filmmaking process. There's a great fight with a Cossack assassin at the start which is one of the best-choreographed fight sequences I've seen this year (and I do like me my fight scenes) and even the slow down/speed up camerawork which is has been de rigeur for action sequences ever since 300 works. The closing reel, in which the end-of-wave fight between Holmes & Moriarty is an actual battle of wits rather than the standard Hollywood trope of running fight in a burning/collapsing building, even works better than I expected.
So it is that, for once, I can actually say in a review that this is a film worth seeing. I feel like I've betrayed myself a bit.
Of course, depite the title it has absolutely nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes, but you already knew that, right?
