Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes has and likely will continue to receive attention -- positive, negative, thoughtful and juvenile -- concerning the transparency of its "hinted" homosexual bond between Sherlock Holmes and his trusty friend Dr. Watson. Indeed, they're so inseparable that one might be forgiven for assuming that Guy Ritchie had adapted the work of Sir Arthur Conan Bro-yle. Christ, is this really how I've decided to usher in the new year of this blog? With asinine puns that would make a five-year-old groan? I deeply apologize ladies and gentlemen; if I have offended one or all of my five regular readers I can only assure you that it shan't happen again.

Where were we? Ah yes, Guy Ritchie's action-flick re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes. Well, perhaps it's not as extreme a makeover as some believe: in Doyle's stories, Holmes knew the street fighting techniques Robert Downey Jr. uses every few minutes to knock what few teeth haven't already rotted off out of the mouths of cockney thugs. Downey is, even to this admitted fanboy, astounding in the role of Holmes: one could be forgiven for cynically viewing Downey's casting as proof that producers will seemingly never fund a big-budget British action feature without an American star for insurance, but that ignores both Downey's tenuous, recently founded position as a bankable star and his incandescent performance as the English Charlie Chaplin. Downey captures the full range of the character, Holmes' wit, infinitely broad range of knowledge and powers of deduction.

Furthermore, the world Ritchie builds around Downey and his fantastic performance is an exemplary depiction of Victorian England, flawless in its deep, grimy flaws. The skies maintain a constant gray formed from that terrible mention of London's rainy climate and the pollution of the Industrial Revolution; stagnant rainwater forms into puddles everywhere, but this London is so dull that the water can barely reflect it. A moderate steampunk influence permeates this world, with spring-loaded Derringers and an electric contraption that proves central to a climactic setpiece.

Downey and the background are the two best aspects of the film, but both are outrageously, inexplicably truncated, set aside in a movie that belongs to them in favor of...what, exactly? Certainly not the intricacies of the plot, involving the cultish occupations of one Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, who is now apparently contractually obligated to be a villain in any movie that calls for a British antagonist), a Member of Parliament caught sacrificing young virgins (oy) by Holmes and hanged by the courts. He's pronounced dead -- by none other than Dr. Watson (Jude Law, hopefully staging a comeback after slipping from guaranteed bankability to critical and commercial indifference in the last few years) -- but returns from the grave and continues to kill.

The problem with this setup is that it clearly defines the villain in a "whodunit" movie, which might not have been a detriment had Ritchie streamlined the picture. Yet Sherlock Holmes drones on for two hours with barely enough material to fill a 70-minute film: Law has nothing to do but pout as Watson and occasionally lend a hand in a fight, a streetwise version of Law's performance as Lord Alfred Douglas in Wilde. Various interesting characteristics dash fleetingly across the screen -- a gambling problem, the question of his medical acumen in pronouncing a man dead who "returned" from the grave, the tension he suffers from his fiancée and Holmes' rivalry -- but they vanish as soon as they appear, titillating the audience with the promise of three-dimensionality before firmly rooting Watson as nothing more than the straight man (so to speak) for Holmes. Holmes himself has few opportunities to prove his intelligence, never letting us in on a single aspect of his thought process during the main investigation and demonstrating his deductive reasoning in one or two tacked-on scenes inserted to assure the audience that he's a genius; had the writers cut out these scenes -- all of them unimportant and at best barely relevant to the story -- and simply allowed Holmes to deduce relevant clues while still retaining the ultimate mystery until the end, Sherlock Holmes might have been as entertaining as it thinks it is.

And what of that latent homosexuality between Holmes and Watson? Does it provide anything other than nervous titters for gently homophobic crowds? I can think of no reason why Holmes, the most brilliant man in Britain, would revert to the mindset of a five-year-old when faced with the prospect of his dear friend getting engaged. He's above frat-boy sexism, thus leaving a gay crush as the only reasonable explanation, but Ritchie softens this by providing Holmes a romantic foil with Irene Alder (Rachel McAdams), one of only two characters (along with Moriarty) who could successfully match wits with Sherlock Holmes. By injecting her into the film primarily to offset complaints by purists and homophobes, however, Ritchie cheapens the character, along with Holmes: while Downey has a firm grasp on the character, Ritchie and the writers don't, and the only reason Irene -- seen often at the mercy of a mysterious employer -- ever pulls a fast one on Holmes is because he is occasionally forced to act like an idiot for the sake of convenience.

Sherlock Holmes is fun enough, I suppose, and there are far worse ways I could have spent my New Year's midnight screening (some people likely are catching up on the awards bait, so I imagine at least a few poor souls watched Precious). There are a few sly tidbits here and there, such as a cheeky Victorian take on someone hearing a creepy noise then continuing to bathe without a care; the cast largely acquits themselves nicely, and fans of Mike Leigh's black-lighthearted comedy Happy-Go-Lucky should be pleased to see the splendid Eddie Marsan as the questionably competent Inspector Lestrade. It's also wonderful to see Robert Downey, Jr. cleaned up and gaining traction at last in Hollywood as the lead of two concurrent franchises. Long may he reign. But the entire structure of Sherlock Holmes is just off: Holmes doesn't detail any clue until the very end, after an action setpiece that renders further discussion moot and offers only a "oh that's how they did it" montage that would fit better in a CSI episode than a cleverly constructed Holmes tale. By the time it finally gets around to the plot, no one cares, and that's more or less Sherlock Holmes in a nutshell.

Revolver

[Pay no attention to the quote on the poster]

Of all the late-90s Tarantino knockoffs who popped up in the wake of Pulp Fiction, Guy Ritchie was certainly the best. He clearly owed a debt to that New-New-Wave guru, but added enough cockney charm to stand out somewhat. There's nothing in either Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch I'd call brilliant (save perhaps Brad Pitt's turn as an Irish gypsy), but both of them are quintessential rainy day films, and I looked forward to his next project.

Then I heard about Swept Away, his disastrous 2002 romance film starring then-wife Madonna. Supposedly one of the worst films ever made, it's on my to-see list, and I can hardly wait. But Ritchie's return to the world of British gangster's, Revolver, would be a step back on track, right?

Wrong. Revolver gets so much so wrong that I'm hesitant to even give it the time of day. I feel like Sheriff Bell from No Country for Old Men: this film frightens me, and the only way I could understand it is if I made myself a part of its rampant failure. It's as if Ritchie went through his two previous films and, like a bizarro surgeon, carefully removed every negative quality, then sewed them all together to make this. It gave me the answer to a question I never thought I'd think up: what if Frankenstein reanimated a pile of shit?

The plot: Jake Green (Jason Statham) gets out of prison, where he's been for seven years for reasons that are only alluded to. Apparently a casino owner (Ray Liotta) put him there because Jake figured out the "Formula" to win at every game. Then he learns to apply the Formula to lif- no, you know, what? I'm not bothering. There's no sense of internal logic here, so why should I waste time?

To cut down to the bare essentials and cut out all of the film (you're welcome), the film aims to be a meditation on greed and ego, and the Formula is the ultimate rejection of the ego's effect on our lives. I say "aims" because it fails completely. In order to put his point forward, Ritchie mixes his kinetic style of directing with Richard Kelly's type of--for lack of a better term--writing. That means time jumps, alternate realities, and just a general state of confusion.

Don't get me wrong; I admire the fact that Ritchie didn't just remake Lock, Stock again, and that he tried to add some intelligence to the fray, but there's a big difference between intelligence and just tacking crap together randomly. Statham has to play both himself and himself, as Jake Green and his ego, and that creates a problem. Statham exists for one reason: to kill things, preferably with punches and cars. Suddenly he represents the existentialism of the mind? You might as well remake a Katherine Hepburn movie with Jessica Alba.

It's flashy; I'll give Ritchie that. But his camera tricks add nothing to the story other than to call attention to themselves and to annoy the hell out of me. And what happened to Ray Liotta? I'm not the first one to say this and, until he finally gets into a good movie again, I won't be the last, but what an utter tragedy. At least Mickey Rourke's crazy; what's Liotta's excuse? This isn't the worst film I've ever seen, but it's up (down?) there. Thank God RocknRolla got Ritchie back into the realm of adequacy.

RocknRolla

At this point, Guy Ritchie is probably- oh, let’s face it, he is best known for being Madonna’s soon-to-be ex. That’s a bit tragic considering at one point the director of “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” was the king of the Tarantino clones, the only one who managed to make something almost original out of the post-“Pulp Fiction” furor. Then he made “Swept Away” and “Revolver,” two of the worst films of all time. At this point Ritchie set the bar so low he could have made a snuff film and gotten better reviews. Instead, he went back to the familiar “Lock, Stock” ground, with generally positive results.

Pinning down the plot is a bit tricky, as the film is more about subplots than an actual narrative. The main thrust of the story concerns a real estate deal between Uri (Karel Roden), an endlessly wealthy Russian businessman, and Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), a notorious gangster who considers himself the true ruler of London. As an act of good faith between partners, Uri gives his lucky painting to Lenny. Soon, it gets stolen, and all hell breaks loose. Ritchie sure loves his Macguffins, doesn’t he?

While Lenny combs the London underworld for the painting, a street gang called the Wild Bunch and its leader One-Two (“300’s” Gerard Butler) start stealing Uri’s payments to Lenny with the help Uri’s accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), who’s taken to theft out of sheer boredom. If that sounds a bit complicated, wait til the subplots pop up. One-Two must deal with the advances of a recently outed homosexual friend; Lenny has to track down a possibly dead rock star; and Lenny’s right-hand man Archie (Mark Strong) goes around slapping people for information. The ushers should hand out playbills for this movie.

The problem with all these goings-on is that it gives the film a certain hollowness. Almost all the characters are genuinely interesting, but we get so little time with any of them thanks to the dizzying jump cuts. Thandie Newton sleeps through the film, showing up just to look pretty and drop some pithy line, and you can only make out every third word Butler says. Jeremy Piven and Ludacris show up, ostensibly so we the audience will remark “Hey look, it’s Jeremy Piven and Ludacris!” They use up valuable screen time that could have been devoted to one or several of the more interesting characters.

Still, the good outweighs the bad. Mark Strong, who was the best thing about Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies,” similarly stands out here with his offbeat performance, while the great character actor Tom Wilkinson puts in fine work as usual. The characters all have enough quirks to stand out, and, but Ritchie should have cut some unnecessary characters and scenes and focused more on its motley crew instead of an intense mob story that feels generic coming from him.

This is, at heart, a film designed to be more fun for its cast than its audience. Indeed, the actors are so clearly having a good time that “RocknRolla” has an undeniable charm, and it lacks much of the self-assured smugness that made the similarly overpopulated “Oceans” films so tedious. For all its complications, a lot less goes on than you might think, and the rapid editing makes a gangster comedy seem like an action movie. Fans of Ritchie should rejoice; it’s not as entertaining as “Lock, Stock” or “Snatch,” but it’s certainly a step in the right direction after his last two films and a welcome return to form.