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narcasseTo preface this just in case somebody doesn’t get the above reference, there use to be, when I was still doing A-levels, the possibility of scoring so lowly on a paper that you were awarded an N. I’ve no idea what the N stood for but the general consensious was that it probably stood for ‘nearly a grade’ or as my colleagues and I described it ‘nice try’ with appropriate layers of sarcasm. Of course there was a grade U or ‘ungradable’ but the theory for that was that you’d managed to spell your own name incorrectly on the mock paper which isn’t quite appropriate here.
I was actually surprised by just how bland this film was, there were lots of poor design choices and plenty of just plain wrong, which will at least be of future use in distinguishing people who’ve read the stories from people who like mediocre films, but not really too much to get entirely enraged about. Hence the ‘nice try’ rather than the suggestion that Guy Ritchie go home and learn to spell his name correctly. Robert Downey Jr. is always a rather good actor and while Jude Law can’t act nobody ever actually hires him to do so: instead he seems to be awarded roles on the strength of his ability to be pissy while playing a supposedly diverse array of characters. There’s even some promise in the idea of a jaded, declining Holmes that I’m sure in better hands might have actually seemed plausible on screen.
The problem with this film is that there are evident ploys to cover up an uninspiring rendition of the master detective with bits of canon stitched on haphazardly. The audience is given the arrest scene from The Red Headed League without any of its charm or its oddly dignified villain and instead a character design for Blackwood that certainly looks like it’s been borrowed from Tim McInnerny’s version of John Clay in the Granada series. I’d also like to know how Blackwood has acquired an aristocratic title which would either be the correct conversational form of address for a peer of the realm or the legitimate son of a Duke or Marquess. After all, he’s not legitimate and therefore isn’t going to be in any position to claim any dues from his father’s situation so I can only suppose that he’s gone the Voldemort route of titling himself.
Other egregious characterisation being the issue of what the films tells us is Irene Adler who is pretty evidently not. Irene Adler is clever, devious and outwits Holmes to sail away into the sunset with her new husband: what she’s not is a petty criminal with a slew of husbands to her credit. She’s famous enough and glamorous enough to have had a relationship with the King of Bohemia before he ascended the throne, and there may or may not have been plenty of other admirers, but she’s a woman moving in Victorian society so she has to be cleverer than the men anyway. If they wanted a woman who it could be canonically conjectured as using men and then throwing them aside then what’s wrong with Isadora Klein from The Three Gables instead? The version in the Granada series really painted her as a suitable villain after all.
And it’s not just the characters who seem to be bizarre mismatches. There are also odd references like Moriarty’s handgun which seems to be a nod to The Empty House and Colonel Moran’s airgun innovation or the analysis of Watson’s brother’s pocketwatch from The Sign of Four except applied to somebody else’s pocketwatch entirely. Even the entire tone of the film seems to have been taken from The Sussex Vampire adaptation up to and including the idea of the villain of the piece rising from the grave without any of the convincing theatrics.
Blackwood’s ‘magic’ being pre-prepared trickery of the obvious stage magician variety was readily apparent from around the point at which the coffin was opened and pretty much confirmed by the point of his setting his fellow Lodge member on fire. Stage magic is a combination of skill and preparation but there needs to be some decent misdirection, charm and genuine sleight-of-hand going on first to make it appear suitably impressive. Blackwood displayed none of these qualities and his turning his back to the chap who spontaneously combusted pretty much nailed it for me because he wasn’t even attempting to make it look like his handiwork: Gabriel in The Prophecy he was not nor even Eisenheim in The Illusionist. Then again the entire order he seemed to aspire to lead were a very strange organisation anyway. On one hand they were continually hinted to operate like the Masons, right down to their architecture containing the usual sort of hoo-hah but missing every essential indicator of who or what they really were. In fact, I’d like to strangle the set designer for that segment alone, and possibly the appropriate costume designer as well for designing regalia that looked like the real deal with too much fuss and not enough actual insignia. If you’re going to pretend that they’re Masons then do so: if you’re not don’t, especially not by trying to come up with similar trappings and then stripping the important details off. Of course this isn’t helped by the ‘magic’ book Holmes is shown later on. Said book lacking geometry, maths, pages upon pages of detailed, and often tedious, explanations of how you may well get it wrong: instead just consisting of Hebrew and pictures. If it doesn’t look like the result of a maths textbook throwing up on a printing press I’m just not buying it. Western esotericism is all about the geometric angles, especially male dominated Western esotericism, to the point where it’s almost a refuge for thwarted architects. Though considering Bristol sometimes the architects got in on the esotericism too.
Beyond all those troubles I had previously heard that Guy Ritchie only knew how to make gangster films and from watching this I can quite believe it. I could have lived with the action sequences up and including the boxing match but everything after that was one too many. The slow motion blowing up of the meat factory for instance was more than a step too far unless it was that long stride off a short pier. I actually cringed at almost war-flashback run using part of a crate for cover. Not that I should have been surprised when Watson didn’t seem to have a war injury to start with and instead a gambling problem and a literal ‘bull pup’ instead of just a reference to his temper.
There is enough room in canon for there to be some debate about Holmes’ feelings about Watson’s marriage which was about the only redeeming thing about Watson’s characterisation. Mary Morstan at least had one moment of actual sense in telling Holmes to solve the case whatever the cost after Watson’s injury but other than that the problem, as with most Hollywood films, seemed to be that ‘sass’ had been confused with strength. Mary Morstan and Irene Adler are both woman bound by the conventions of the time so that while they can be daring and charming and clever they have to do so with enough cunning and wit that they’ll still be able to hide behind appropriate smiles and lace fans. What they can’t do is be obvious and foolish like the men, and sadly every Hollywood Victorian era film seems to get that wrong. It comes right back to the fact that the Marquise de Merteuil has to be more dangerous and wary than the Vicomte de Valmont because the odds are so highly stacked against her that her options are only ever die or adapt: why Hollywood never understands this always confounds me.
What else? The music wasn’t bad but considering it was Hans Zimmer that’s a given, I’m fairly sure the preacher yelling about the end of days with Blackwood’s resurrection was wearing clothing at least a century out of date and are we really meant to believe that Irene Adler ran from Westminster to Tower Hill via the sewers and then climbed up the unfinished Tower Bridge without being anything like out of breath when she got there? I’ve had to walk from Westminster to Embankment before and while it’s not too much of a walk it’s certainly not Blackfriers to Temple to the point where if I was even going as far as London Bridge I’d prefer to opt for the Tommy’s to Guy’s bus every time. Granted, I have walked a roundabout route from Leicester Square to Oxford Circus right back down to Denmark Hill before, as well as walking from Embankment back down in that direction but in my defence I was pretty well sozzled at the time and thought that anything was possible. I may even recall attempting to sing show tunes with my companion by the time we’d reached Trafalgar Square in the early hours of the morning.
Thus overall, the film wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t what I’d call good either. It was mediocre and most likely perfectly pitched for a generation who don’t know who Conan Doyle is and certainly won’t make any effort to read the canon after they’ve watched this fairly forgettable rendition.
I was actually surprised by just how bland this film was, there were lots of poor design choices and plenty of just plain wrong, which will at least be of future use in distinguishing people who’ve read the stories from people who like mediocre films, but not really too much to get entirely enraged about. Hence the ‘nice try’ rather than the suggestion that Guy Ritchie go home and learn to spell his name correctly. Robert Downey Jr. is always a rather good actor and while Jude Law can’t act nobody ever actually hires him to do so: instead he seems to be awarded roles on the strength of his ability to be pissy while playing a supposedly diverse array of characters. There’s even some promise in the idea of a jaded, declining Holmes that I’m sure in better hands might have actually seemed plausible on screen.
The problem with this film is that there are evident ploys to cover up an uninspiring rendition of the master detective with bits of canon stitched on haphazardly. The audience is given the arrest scene from The Red Headed League without any of its charm or its oddly dignified villain and instead a character design for Blackwood that certainly looks like it’s been borrowed from Tim McInnerny’s version of John Clay in the Granada series. I’d also like to know how Blackwood has acquired an aristocratic title which would either be the correct conversational form of address for a peer of the realm or the legitimate son of a Duke or Marquess. After all, he’s not legitimate and therefore isn’t going to be in any position to claim any dues from his father’s situation so I can only suppose that he’s gone the Voldemort route of titling himself.
Other egregious characterisation being the issue of what the films tells us is Irene Adler who is pretty evidently not. Irene Adler is clever, devious and outwits Holmes to sail away into the sunset with her new husband: what she’s not is a petty criminal with a slew of husbands to her credit. She’s famous enough and glamorous enough to have had a relationship with the King of Bohemia before he ascended the throne, and there may or may not have been plenty of other admirers, but she’s a woman moving in Victorian society so she has to be cleverer than the men anyway. If they wanted a woman who it could be canonically conjectured as using men and then throwing them aside then what’s wrong with Isadora Klein from The Three Gables instead? The version in the Granada series really painted her as a suitable villain after all.
And it’s not just the characters who seem to be bizarre mismatches. There are also odd references like Moriarty’s handgun which seems to be a nod to The Empty House and Colonel Moran’s airgun innovation or the analysis of Watson’s brother’s pocketwatch from The Sign of Four except applied to somebody else’s pocketwatch entirely. Even the entire tone of the film seems to have been taken from The Sussex Vampire adaptation up to and including the idea of the villain of the piece rising from the grave without any of the convincing theatrics.
Blackwood’s ‘magic’ being pre-prepared trickery of the obvious stage magician variety was readily apparent from around the point at which the coffin was opened and pretty much confirmed by the point of his setting his fellow Lodge member on fire. Stage magic is a combination of skill and preparation but there needs to be some decent misdirection, charm and genuine sleight-of-hand going on first to make it appear suitably impressive. Blackwood displayed none of these qualities and his turning his back to the chap who spontaneously combusted pretty much nailed it for me because he wasn’t even attempting to make it look like his handiwork: Gabriel in The Prophecy he was not nor even Eisenheim in The Illusionist. Then again the entire order he seemed to aspire to lead were a very strange organisation anyway. On one hand they were continually hinted to operate like the Masons, right down to their architecture containing the usual sort of hoo-hah but missing every essential indicator of who or what they really were. In fact, I’d like to strangle the set designer for that segment alone, and possibly the appropriate costume designer as well for designing regalia that looked like the real deal with too much fuss and not enough actual insignia. If you’re going to pretend that they’re Masons then do so: if you’re not don’t, especially not by trying to come up with similar trappings and then stripping the important details off. Of course this isn’t helped by the ‘magic’ book Holmes is shown later on. Said book lacking geometry, maths, pages upon pages of detailed, and often tedious, explanations of how you may well get it wrong: instead just consisting of Hebrew and pictures. If it doesn’t look like the result of a maths textbook throwing up on a printing press I’m just not buying it. Western esotericism is all about the geometric angles, especially male dominated Western esotericism, to the point where it’s almost a refuge for thwarted architects. Though considering Bristol sometimes the architects got in on the esotericism too.
Beyond all those troubles I had previously heard that Guy Ritchie only knew how to make gangster films and from watching this I can quite believe it. I could have lived with the action sequences up and including the boxing match but everything after that was one too many. The slow motion blowing up of the meat factory for instance was more than a step too far unless it was that long stride off a short pier. I actually cringed at almost war-flashback run using part of a crate for cover. Not that I should have been surprised when Watson didn’t seem to have a war injury to start with and instead a gambling problem and a literal ‘bull pup’ instead of just a reference to his temper.
There is enough room in canon for there to be some debate about Holmes’ feelings about Watson’s marriage which was about the only redeeming thing about Watson’s characterisation. Mary Morstan at least had one moment of actual sense in telling Holmes to solve the case whatever the cost after Watson’s injury but other than that the problem, as with most Hollywood films, seemed to be that ‘sass’ had been confused with strength. Mary Morstan and Irene Adler are both woman bound by the conventions of the time so that while they can be daring and charming and clever they have to do so with enough cunning and wit that they’ll still be able to hide behind appropriate smiles and lace fans. What they can’t do is be obvious and foolish like the men, and sadly every Hollywood Victorian era film seems to get that wrong. It comes right back to the fact that the Marquise de Merteuil has to be more dangerous and wary than the Vicomte de Valmont because the odds are so highly stacked against her that her options are only ever die or adapt: why Hollywood never understands this always confounds me.
What else? The music wasn’t bad but considering it was Hans Zimmer that’s a given, I’m fairly sure the preacher yelling about the end of days with Blackwood’s resurrection was wearing clothing at least a century out of date and are we really meant to believe that Irene Adler ran from Westminster to Tower Hill via the sewers and then climbed up the unfinished Tower Bridge without being anything like out of breath when she got there? I’ve had to walk from Westminster to Embankment before and while it’s not too much of a walk it’s certainly not Blackfriers to Temple to the point where if I was even going as far as London Bridge I’d prefer to opt for the Tommy’s to Guy’s bus every time. Granted, I have walked a roundabout route from Leicester Square to Oxford Circus right back down to Denmark Hill before, as well as walking from Embankment back down in that direction but in my defence I was pretty well sozzled at the time and thought that anything was possible. I may even recall attempting to sing show tunes with my companion by the time we’d reached Trafalgar Square in the early hours of the morning.
Thus overall, the film wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t what I’d call good either. It was mediocre and most likely perfectly pitched for a generation who don’t know who Conan Doyle is and certainly won’t make any effort to read the canon after they’ve watched this fairly forgettable rendition.
