Sherlock Holmes

How much you like this movie seems to depend largely on how much you care about maintaining the integrity and tone of the original Sherlock Holmes stories. I mostly don't care as long as they get the essentials right, and since seeing the core idea (an eccentric, detail-obsessed detective and his doctor chum solving elaborate mysteries) translate so well to the modern world in last year's British TV adaptation, I was totally ready for the thought of it also making the transition to big budget, special effect-heavy action movie directed by Guy Ritchie. He's one of the first directors I noticed to have a distinct and interesting style when I was still figuring out how different and interesting movies can really be when I was a young teenager, and I think Sherlock Holmes is his best movie since Snatch. Obviously most people would say that's not saying very much, but I liked the movie and its prospects as a series a lot.

It definitely starts with Robert Downey Jr.'s performance as Holmes. Originally Ritchie wanted to use someone younger, and have the movie act as sort of a Holmes origin story I guess, which sounds like a terrible idea, but the casting of Downey allowed them to get rid of that concept. Instead we just jump right in with Holmes and Watson, who have been working together for years. The action movie thing might not have worked at all without the right actor, but Downey is pretty much always the right actor when it comes to intelligent yet intimidating protagonists, and the whole thing just ends up succeeding. The way they integrate Holmes' incredible attention to minor details into his fisticuffs (which are an actual element of the original stories by the way, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia) makes the fight scenes more interesting than they might have been otherwise, and just every bit of the performance is a joy to watch. Jude Law makes a worthy companion as Watson, and Mark Strong is a pretty good villain as Blackwood. I didn't like Rachel McAdams much as Irene Adler, though she didn't kill the movie for me either.

So while Downey does a lot to make the movie fun and enjoyable, it probably would have been at least decent without him anyway. Of course some elements of the script wouldn't have been there without him, but the final work itself is pretty good, mashing together a pretty interesting pseudo-supernatural plot with some unique and entertaining action sequences. There are moments for many of Holmes' little tricks like his penchant for disguise, and while some of the deductions were disappointingly simple after a lot of the genius stuff in the British TV show (things like identifying family members merely by them having the same rare eye color feel like easy shortcuts), I think the combination of influences worked a lot better than you might expect. Ritchie's direction does a lot to further separate the movie from regular blockbuster fare, spicing up some scenes that would otherwise have been obvious with unique and unexpected choices. Some bits are a bit too familiar, and help prevent the movie from being a real genre classic, but it's about as good as you can reasonably expect something with its box office expectations to be. And while I don't think the intention was to actually imply that Holmes and Watson were ever lovers, the way some of their interactions were played in that light was generally humorous without going overboard. Definitely a movie that benefited from the talent working on it, and it's good to see they're coming back for the sequel. Also, apparently Stephen Fry will play Mycroft, which is just fantastic.

Kick-Ass

So, Kick-Ass. What's interesting about this comic adaptation to me is that that's not actually what it is, exactly. The book was apparently written at the same time as the script for this film, so the departures in tone and story are organic growths from the same idea rather than changes for the sake of changing. Based on what I've read, the movie is less mean-spirited than the book, and also less plausible, especially near the end. Fundamentally, I think it kind of has an identity crisis. Aaron Johnson is a dork in high school who idiotically tries to be the world's first real super hero, and at first things progress very believably - he gets a silly costume, dons the name Kick-Ass, confronts some thugs, and then gets stabbed and hit by a car. Eventually he gets a bit better at it, although he's still quite amateurish. Things take a change though when another pair of heroes are introduced, the father/daughter team of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Nicolas Cage and Chloe Moretz are both pretty great in these roles, Cage especially with a cadence straight from Adam West's school of acting. And the action scenes that feature them at work are a lot of fun. But they're just both way too good at stylishly killing people to buy into the rest of the story as something that could happen.

I generally liked the super hero stuff, although that's not all there is to the movie. There's a fair amount of whiny narration and boring high school stuff going on, none of which you haven't seen before a million times. It's not that it's impossible to make that thing interesting, it's just that this movie fails to do so. He has a couple embarrassing situations, an extremely improbable story arc with a girl who's out of his league, and that's about it. His friend played by Clark Duke has a few funny lines, but if they were going to do this whole ultra violence thing, they could have dedicated more time to developing that part of the story and just cut a lot of the high school stuff out. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is surprisingly still likable as a rich kid who gets involved in the super hero business, and whenever all that stuff is the highlight the movie is a lot more fun. Some of it gets fairly brutal, but it's never too far away from making you laugh again. And about the shock value stuff with a preteen girl killing mobsters and cussing like a sailor - if that stuff offends you, then guess what, it's working. I'll watch the sequel when it comes out, but first Matthew Vaughn has to direct the first X-Men movie without Wolverine. Let's hope he can fix the franchise.