Everything you know is wrong. Sherlock Holmes doesn’t own a deerstalker hat. Or puff one of those calabash pipes. And never in four novels and 56 short stories does he actually say: “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings, he’s a tortured neurotic reclusive coke-head martial artist. And, after almost 200 film appearances as a stuffy bore, that’s who finally shows up here.
Robert Downey Jr brings the quirks. Guy Ritchie supplies the grit. Together the star and director give the detective a much needed kick up the arse. Reimagining the super sleuth as reluctant superhero (a la Batman, Spider Man, Superman, and, yes, Ironman) their ‘Sherlock Holmes’ trades tweed for TNT.
Nils van der Linden 