Not a Literary Piece
I will not trouble you with a breakdown of the plot since you can easily find that at the top of the page. Rather, I will talk about how fans of the great literary works from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might be a bit let down when they watch this movie.
The Good: This movie is full of action and adventure. It can easily stand alone without any references toward the literary works which it is based on. The average movie-goer who loves action movies along with Robert Downey Jr. will be pleased at the end. Jude Law, who is not your grandfather's Watson, certainly does a fine job with the character. The fight scenes, which are few and far between in Sir Doyle's books, keep you on the edge of your seat and certainly do not let you down.
The Bad: At times Downey seemed to run away with the character. What I mean is he made the character his own instead of keeping Holmes in line with the character we grew up reading about . Perhaps this is a good thing for some, but for me it was a let down. In my mind, Sherlock Holmes is a very tall and sophisticated gentleman with a slightly dry sense of humor who is a genius at cracking even the toughest of cases. I also believe Jude Law was only picked up to play Watson in order to attract the ladies to see this movie. Law's Watson too seemed off course from the fun-loving side-kick I always enjoyed from the books.
The Ugly: Guy Ritchie's version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective was much more of a loose-canon. His love of the books, if there ever was any, made only tiny appearances here and there during the film. In my opinion, the literary characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were not done justice in this film. With that being said, the 'Hollywood' version of the duo is perhaps more appealing to the younger generation of today... who will probably never pick up any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books anyway.
