Sherlock Holmes (2009)

What I love so much about Sherlock Holmes was that it was a smart, competent thriller masquerading as a dumb, soulless mystery. The American public does flock to dumb films (I couldn’t even review Transformers: Dark of the Moon because I spent the entire time playing on my computer, not paying attention to the stupidity of a movie that made over a billion dollars), I have to say. And disguising this as stupidity was the best thing marketing could do, because nobody expected how well-made this film was. Based off of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, some of which I have read, Sherlock Holmes stars the scarily brilliant actor Robert Downey Jr. (I hate to say this, but he played a convincing black man in Tropic Thunder [and played Charlie Chaplin, played Iron Man, and played Sherlock Holmes], this man can do anything) as the title character, Jude Law as his realist partner Watson, Rachel McAdams as Holmes’ love interest, Irene Adler, and Mark Strong as the bad guy of the bunch, Lord Blackwood, who has escaped from beyond the grave to wreak havoc in London with the help of villainous black magic, which (Spoiler alert!) can be all turned back to basic science. Sorry kids, but at least in this universe, there is no such thing as magic. Or Santa Claus, just getting that out there on the table. But either way, that is the basic plot of Guy Ritchie’s take on England’s greatest detective. Shadowed by the release of James Cameron’s inferior Avatar, this movie, even though it did make a decent amount of money, has acquired the Shaun of the Dead status, being that movie that people show to their friends over and over again at home where only the cream of the crop are released. And films that have acquired this status are very special films, ones that I love very much. And with the style, action, high-quality acting and characters, and a super-sharp script that I really need to find out if it is being sold in book form. I am not great at writing these reviews while watching other films, and I am currently on my fourth movie in a row, so my writing is a little hasty and cluttered, but I do highly recommend this film. Please go see this, and get the Blu-ray, and show it off to friends, because this is a film so good that it deserves to be seen.
9/10