Arguably English literature's greatest figure of cerebral logic and criminal deduction, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous creation has been put on film countless times over the last century. When it was announced that British director Guy Ritchie would be the latest to bring the pipe-smoking resident of 221B Baker Street to the screen, it was met with no small amount of trepidation. Ritchie had built a career glamourising cockney geezers and small-time hoodlums from contemporary London's chaotic underworld to diminishing success over the past decade. His work was largely tongue in cheek, with a flamboyant, hyperactive visual aesthetic that seemed inappropriate for depicting London at its industrial peak.

Ritchie has defied his critics, however, by delivering a delightful romp of a movie, due in no small part to its assured direction. He has created London at the end of the nineteenth Century is glorious detail - perfectly capturing the city during its heyday, expanding under rapid construction, while nurturing a hotbed of crime, decadence and mystery that spreads through everyone from the beggars and street walkers to Parliament and the Aristocracy.

At the centre of the film, however, is the brilliantly shaped relationship between Holmes and Watson - a tender friendship that over many years has evolved into a bickering, shamelessly co-dependant bond nothing short of a marriage. Robert Downey jr. and Jude Law are both wonderful in their roles, sparring with pithy banter, playful jibes, yet a continuous underlying affection that creates genuine onscreen chemistry.

All the film's best moments come, not from witnessing Holmes' masterful skills of logical deduction, or the numerous scraps and scrapes he frequently finds himself in, but from the crackling back-and-forth between him and his partner. Watson has, albeit hesitantly, made the decision to get married, and Holmes sees only too well how this will break up their long-standing and fruitful partnership. Holmes seems far more determined to keep Watson all to himself than in apprehending Lord Blackwood, and his attempts to do so are as strangely touching as they are frequently hilarious.

Ritchie has assembled an excellent cast of British and American acting talent including the hugely menacing Mark Strong as Blackwood and Eddie Marsan as the long-suffering Inspector Lestrade - forever one step behind Holmes and his hugely superior powers of detection. Rachel McAdams remains charming in a role of little substance as a mysterious international crook who successfully won Holmes' heart, only to betray him, while Kelly Reilly as Watson's fiancée Mary, is deliberately pushed to the periphery.  

With a visually exciting backdrop that playfully hopscotches between period detective yarn, supernatural thriller and steampunk action fantasy, coupled with an engaging and witty script and the knockout pairing of Downey and Law, Ritchie has turned in his best film certainly since SNATCH, if not of his career. A fact made more interesting by the fact it is his first film working from somebody else's script. If he is happy to surrender his mockney gangsters for writing of this caliber, his career may yet see its best days and help steer SHERLOCK HOLMES to becoming Hollywood's newest blockbuster franchise.

Cross published in bc Magazine (Hong Kong)