Ok, own up.  Who has kidnapped Guy Richie and replaced him with someone who can make appealing movies?  Seriously, I only decided to go see this because of Robert Downey Jr (who along with Ed Norton is my favourite actor working today), but I have to hold my hands up and say that I loved it.  Not something I've been able to say about a Guy Richie film since "Lock, Stock...".  Getting rid of that sinewy hag (Madonna to you and me) has clearly done the man good and the creative block has been lifted.

RDJ and Jude Law are both on top form - and it's really not often I have good things to say about Jude Law, believe me.  RDJ is clearly loving every minute of this re-imagined character and makes it completely his own.  This is not Holmes in the classic Basil Rathbone / Jeremy Brett tradition.

Sherlock Holmes is a lot more fun than it has any right to be.  They seem to have taken inspiration from a couple of places.  Firstly and most obviously, Holmes has basically become Batman.  He's off-the-chart smart but he also fist-fights, is stealthy, and survives explosions that would have killed normal people.  Sounds tacky but hey this is fantasy and it works well.  Having done a bit of digging however, it seems that in the original books and stories, Holmes was an accomplished fist-fighter and martial artist, so clearly this interpretation has gone back to the basics but then taken a different path from earlier adaptations.

The second inspiration seems to me to be from "House", the medical drama starring Hugh Laurie.  Now, given that "House" is directly inspired by Sherlock Holmes, things have come full circle.  It's most obvious in the Holmes / Watson relationship, which mirrors quite closely the House / Wilson relationship in the TV show.  If you're familiar with the show you'll see what I mean when you watch the film. 

The plot, about a practitioner of Black Magic, walks a thin line - at times it could go either way but for me it never slipped over into ridiculous.  Instead it reminded me of some of the classic Hammer Horror movies, like "The Devil Rides Out", as did the main villain (an excellent Mark Strong who I had never heard of until now).  It's intriguing, and you don't have the ending telegraphed to you, which makes a change.

Special effects - top notch.  There is a sequence with a boat which was especially spectacular, and the look of London is astonishing.  The whole film looks lush.  Even Mr Richie's trademark slow-fast-slow editing doesn't detract - in fact this works really well when you're being shown Holmes train of thought through flashback or flashforward.

So there you are, go see it.  This is definitely on my must-buy list for the New Year, hope they can get the BluRay out before Summer - but I may well go see it again at the cinema before that, that's how much I liked it.

Trailer below:

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