Sir Barnaby Krudge – Gentleman Detective

So onto yet another movie based entry. I saw Sherlock Holmes a couple of weeks ago now. It entertained me, nothing more than that though.

I love the Jeremy Brett portrayal of Sherlock Holmes as it’s pitch perfect, like Kevin Spacey as Sgt Jack Vincennes or Paul Danan in anything he’s ever flexed his mighty acting chops in. But this was quite literally fuck all like Sherlock Holmes. I mean apart from the names it had absolutely nothing to do with the books whatsoever.

I recall when it was announced Guy Ritchie had signed himself up for this bad boy i imagined some ridiculous tale where shit gets real for Holmes & Watson and fuck tons of ass needs to be kicked in the midst of massive action set piece’s. Well that happens. If there’s one thing I know about those two fucks is that they love to bust heads…no wait..sorry its all about eliminating all that is impossible and whats left, no matter how improbable, leads to the truth (or words to that effect). He’s a fucking detective you twat.

It’s not as big a shit storm as the Tim Burton Superman Could have turned out to be, cos that was truly mental (Superman teleporting cos Burton didn’t like him flying). It was entertaining but i felt that the use of the Sherlock Holmes name was a fruitless exercise, hence my title. I think it may have just served as a means to alienate fans of the books and taint the image of the books to folk who liked this version of him.

I understand the use of it to get the audience interested in the film but it, to me, was pointless. If it served as Mark Strong’s calling card to obtain the role of Sinestro in the Green Lantern movie then i applaud him, but even so it seems such a waste of the resources of a major studio to use it on this when fantastic Victorian detective drama’s like the Lucifer Box series are waiting in the wings to be adapted.

Sherlock Holmes was hard, that is fact. I seem to recall a passage in one of the books where he is recognised by a boxer who notes he once saw him beat someone in a boxing match and that he had promise as a fighter. with Holmes it wasn’t the fact that he could beat your head to peices, even though he probably could, it was that he outwitted you so completely. He out smarted you and then some. Hitchcock said “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it”. He unpicked everything you set in place and defeated you so utterly. He didn’t throw a fucking hammer at a henchman’s face, then later leave Watson to sleeper hold the piss out of him.

I enjoyed it, but it was stupid bollocks.

If Guy Ritchie held the reigns on other literary heroes would they end up as distorted as this ? Probably. Hopefully more so.

I like to witness the differing paths that both Guy Ritchie and Matt Vaughn have taken. While Vaughn has produced really thoughtful movies and Ritchie just hasn’t. And he seems unable to change his stroke whatsoever, as Sherlock Holmes, at the very centre of its vanilla flavoured putty coloured heart, is a very pedestrian London based crime tale. Perfect for him it seems.

It also took a long while to unroll the wafer thin, but strange as it may seem, pointlessly convoluted plot. It ambled along until the very end where the crap twist was no twist at all if you know some basic Holmes facts. The explanation of his deductive work carried out throughout the film was terrible. The addition of Irene Adler to the plot was also turbo shit to the max.

But, as i stated earlier, i enjoyed it.