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Created Dec 28, 2011 10:23PM PST • Edited Oct 21, 2023 06:32AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Britishly brilliant movie entertainment, what with Victorian-era detective shenanigans done up in state-of-the-art action movie hyper-reality. This latest Sherlock Holmes re-renders Guy Ritchie & Robert Downey Jr’s boldly boffo origin movie from two years ago, complete with the first one’s distinctions.

   • Magnificent visuals? Check. Victorian-era London, Paris and a storybook cliffside castle are presented with intense verisimilitude.
   • Deja vu action scenes? Check. Holmes’ minds-eye visualizes every move of each battle in advance, doubling the action quotient while guaranteeing a supernatural sense of reality.
   • Superstar performance? Check. Downey delivers another dextrously adroit performance, physically and verbally. The actor who essayed Chaplin now is Chaplin, in a 21st Century way. The movie becomes bracing whenever he’s in a scene. Fortunately that’s most every one.
   • Ultimate bromance? Check. Gay? No, old fashioned.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Robert Downey Jr. makes most of the movie’s magic, notwithstanding the gazillion dollar production values and Guy Ritchie’s visual inventiveness. Downey declaiming is a singular pleasure of the current cinema. Thus he was born to play – and play again – the world’s greatest detective. The multitude of disguises alone give him countless opportunities for verbal mischief. Elementary for him. Delightful for us.

   Jude Law makes a smashing Dr. Watson, straight-man extraordinaire in more ways than one.

   Supporting Players

   • Noomi Rapace is adequate as a Gypsy seer, in a come-down from her legendary Lisbeth Salander.
   • Rachel McAdams disappoints again, fortunately not taking up as much screen time this go round.
   • Jared Harris makes a twitchy Professor Moriarty. It’s clear why the great Richard Harris’s son never became a leading man.
   • Stephen Fry delights as the other Holmes – Mycroft Holmes. Great name “Mycroft,” like something JK Rowling would invent. Mycroft, brother of “Shirley” Holmes. Leave it to the British. In any case, the surprise introduction of blood kin recalls Sean Connery’s Professor Henry Jones from The Last Crusade. High praise indeed.
   • Kelly Reilly pleases once again in the thankless role of Watson’s faithful betrothed. Thankless perhaps, but nearly every scene she’s in is funny, one downright hilarious. Watch out for that train….

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars OK 2.5

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Guy Ritchie fight scenes are more fun than a barrel of drunk monkeys. Time is on his side, what with the trademark presaging technique he used in Snatch and perfected in his first Sherlock Holmes picture.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Fierce 2.0

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.3

    What does it take to place Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian detective in IndyJonesian hyper-reality? 90 stuntmen (twice the previous movie) and nearly ten “draughtsmen” as they say in England. Guess those latter are part of how Guy Ritchie built St Paul’s and created Notre Dame de Paris.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Supernatural 3.9

24. Physical Surreal 3.0