Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes the movie is essentially an adventure romance, as Holmes (Downey Jr.) and Watson (Law) try to break up their friendship and through crooked schemes and explosions and near escapes, realize in the end how much they mean to one another after all. At the beginning Watson is preparing to move out of 221b Baker Street, with plans to propose to pretty and proper Mary (Kelly Reilly) and leave the detective business entirely. Holmes, bored and hilariously jealous, attempts to sabotage Watson's engagement and also draw him back into the game, now that an old closed case has suddenly reopened.
Months earlier Watson and Holmes put away Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), an aristocrat who murdered five people via some kind of dark arts ceremony. Watson himself supervised Blackwood's hanging, but when he appears to have risen from the dead, everyone including the police wants to know how he did it. Blackwood and his legion of followers have plans for world domination via drinking potions and other supposed magic, while Holmes goes about finding Blackwood in the only way he knows how-- using his "not inconsiderable knowledge" and foolproof logic. Meanwhile, Holmes's old flame Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) is back in town, a criminal beauty working secretly for a shadowy boss with a penchant for fancy weaponry. Adler pops up from time to time to help Watson and Holmes in their investigations, and it's clear to the audience that she'll throw a wrench in things even when Holmes hasn't quite gotten there.

The plot itself is not as clear as it could be. But the story really just provides a vehicle for the action and the fantastic character interactions, one of which delivers slightly better than the other. The action set pieces, like a fight at a shipyard and the final race against the clock, are brilliantly structured. The editing often works brilliantly with slow motion scenes quickly speeding up and interesting camera angles that put you right at the centre of the action.

All this editing works great in Holmes's investigation scenes, allowing him visual flashbacks to all the clues that led him to his conclusions and avoiding the dreadful slowness that comes with most mystery-solving monologues. Miraculously the audience is right there with Holmes even during his most out-there epiphanies, and the equally out-there camerawork pays off well in making this period piece feel unstuffy, but also not gimmicky. One of the best action films I have seen in years.