I’ve been trying to tell myself to get over it but the Sherlock Holmes of Guy Ritchie’s divorce-addled imaginings is smug, inauthentic, self-congratulatory rubbish. With Holmes emerging as a kind of Victorian Martin Riggs, and Watson transformed into his thuggish, ex-military, love interest, there’s already enough iconoclasm to implode worlds. There’s also a whole new plot concerning black magic and power grabs and pretty conwomen and underground boxing that’s an abortive tangle of utter drivel. And it’s further scuppered by Robert Downey Junior’s incomprehensible gabbling with an appalling British accent. He’s back in my pre-Iron Man books for this one; a crappy waster with a meth habit. Unforgivable. Only Jude Law – a pretty boy of middling talent I’d not ever given much though to – does well (and looks fine in his top hat.) The rest of it is two hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
A lot of the Victorian London scenes look OK but really reminded me of something done by Ubisoft for Playstation (we’re working our way through Assassin’s Creed this month) A couple of the backdrops – Covent Garden, Chatham Docks and Brompton Cemetary to name but three – were original.