So over in that corner we had “Avatar,” embracing a host of story cliches under the apparent belief that technological advances in movie making were sufficient to rise above them and make the film more than it was, instead of having the unoriginality of thought dragging the whole enterprise down.
And over in this corner, we have “Sherlock Holmes,” a character who would seem the epitome of old hat, tired, overdone, so much so that there hasn’t been a Holmes feature film in American theaters in twenty years (although he has been omnipresent on television in incarnations ranging from the Jeremy Brett to Hugh Laurie as the Holmesian “House.”)
Yet the new “Sherlock Holmes” film that debuted Christmas day shows how everything old can be made new again–in this instance by returning to the source material in ways that even those who fancy themselves Holmes fanciers are unaware were ever part of canon.
Much was made of descriptions that seemed to characterize the film as “Indiana Holmes.” Sherlock as a man of action rather than a cool, detached intellectual? Madness, it seemed! A dumbing down of a classic hero, a rethinking designed to cater to modern audiences.
Well…no. Let us remember that Arthur Conan Doyle chose to have Holmes and his brilliant nemesis, Moriarty, settle their differences not through a bloodless, intellectual chess match of wits, but instead through a hand to hand struggle atop a waterfalls during which Holmes employed martial arts to defeat his enemy.
Or, if you prefer, go all the way back to “A Study in Scarlet” in which Watson makes a laundry list of Holmes’ attributes and among them is:
“11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.”
In the course of the new film, Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes is seen using cudgels (i.e., singlesticks), a sword, and his fists. (Several times we actually see Holmes work through everything he’s going to do to dismantle his opponent physically and, only once he has done so, does he then launch an attack; the thinking man’s action hero.) To say nothing of the fact that we know Holmes is physically strong because in one story, when a ruffian attempted to threaten Holmes by bending a fireplace poker in half, Holmes calmly waited until the guy left and then bent the poker back into shape. So all of the material that the so-called purists objected to were actually far more faithful to the spirit of ACD’s work than many of the subsequent dramatizations that focused solely on Holmes using deductive reasoning (which, by the way, I believe was actually closer to inductive than deductive, but never mind that.)
I’m not quite sure how newcomers to Holmes will react to the film. Rather than introduce the characters and establish their bond, the film focuses on one of those periods during which Watson, as Holmes put it in the texts, is in the process of deserting him for a wife, an action that the literary Holmes describes as “selfish” and the filmic Holmes makes explicit, practically to Watson’s face. The filmmakers just figure that everyone seeing their film will grant the notion that Holmes and Watson are an inseparable duo who are now being separated. Indeed, in the original script, there’s a lengthy narrative and several pages establishing the history of their pairing that the filmmakers summarily dumped in order to jump straight into the action, a choice that I think was the right one but that might leave the less familiar viewers behind.
But if that’s a weakness (and it’s probably debatable) it’s a relatively minor one as Holmes and Watson face down a foe, the malignant Lord Blackwood who may or may not have returned from the dead in order to implement a master plan that may or may not be steeped in black magic. Director Guy Ritchie briskly puts Holmes and Watson through their paces, and the story even brings us THE woman, Irene Adler, glowingly played by Rachel McAdams, to add some (never consummated, of course) sexual tension to the proceedings.
It’s Downey and Jude Law as Watson who anchor the film, though. Men of action both since the literary Holmes and Watson WERE men of action, with Law’s Watson not a wide-eyed foil to Holmes’ brilliance, but instead a former soldier, crack shot, and dependable partner without whom, as Holmes himself puts it in the stories, he would be lost. Yet that impending loss hangs over Holmes like a shroud throughout the film even as he stays on Blackwood’s trail, adding a deeply personal and emotional element that is typically missing from most Holmes dramatizations (the standout scene is the ill-fated get acquainted dinner between Holmes, Watson, and Watson’s intended in which Holmes anger toward this female threat to his world drives the evening to disaster. Holmes is hurting but will only show it through displays of his brilliance, turning his observational skills into a devastating weapon that cuts to the heart more deeply than any sword.)
An absolutely brilliant film that, if it comes down to choosing between that and “Avatar,” the decision should really be elementary.
PAD
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While I am not quite so impressed with the film as is PAD, he makes a convincing argument. My impression of Holmes had – undoubtedly – been colored by the Jeremy Brett programs. I am not sure the Doyle canon establishes Dr. Watson as a man of action (He was a military surgeon invalided out after one of the Anglo-Afghan wars, although the location of his wound varied from story to story), but much of this interpretation of Holmes is well-supported. I prefer a Holmes more heavily weighted toward the cerebral than the physical, but Guy Richie’s version has its charms.
Note that The Homes stories often had Homes asking Watson to bring a gun.
As Holmes and Adler were verbally fencing during her first scene at 221B, the main thing running through my mind was “Why couldn’t this have made the “Spirit” film?”
That scene and what comes after could very easily, with only minor rewrites, suit Denny Colt and Satin (in her adventuress days) or (even more), Sand Serif.
Overall, i loved the film, though i could have done with a touch less brilliant camera trickery – undercranked slo-mo? – and having Holmes do the analysis-in-advance thing more than once seemed a tad excessive.
I’m glad to hear that Watson is not the ineffectual ninny so often portrayed on film:
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“Heavens, Holmes, some dastard has turned the lights off!”
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“Open your eyes, old sport, you’ve forgotten you had closed them. Again.”
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“What? Oh…by jove, Holmes, good call! Right sticky wicket, eh wot?”
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The fact that SHERLOCK HOLMES is superior to AVATAR is a predictable, though no less disappointing result of one film having a director who nobody can say no to and another having a director who is probably willing to listen and/or has no choice. The George Lucas syndrome.
YES. Holmes was a wonderful holiday gift to us, I think. One of the few films this year that allowed me to escape and think about SOMETHING ELSE for 2 hours. The others being “Inglorious Bášŧërdš” and “The Proposal” for entirely different reasons!
It is amazing how many critics, from places as smart as the NEW YORK TIMES, are complaining that Holmes’s boxing mastery in this movie is a betrayal of the character…
Yes, I read that review. A.O. Scott, whoever he or she is, knows nothing about Holmes and furthermore makes clear his (or her) disdain for the films of Guy Ritchie. Particularly telling was his/her sarcastic description of a sequel:
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No doubt Holmes will break a chair over Moriarty’s head, kidney-punch him and kick him in the face.
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Or maybe he’ll throw Moriarty to his death off the Reichenbach Falls using a Japanese form of wrestling, you idiot.
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PAD
A.O Scott is not only the main reviewer for the TIMES, but also one of Roger Ebert’s replacements on AT THE MOVIES.
I have already had the argument with other folks who consider this a cheapening. “But Doyle’s Holmes WAS a Boxer and martial arts master; Doyle’s Holmes WAS a drug addict; Doyle’s Holmes DID shoot at the wall of his own apartment; Doyle’s Holmes DID fight what we can call supervillains, using the appearance of the supernatural for nefarious ends; and Doyle’s Holmes DID involve himself with a case involving a giant rat.”
A(nthony) O. Scott is one of the reviewers on “At the Movies” which airs in syndication on non-cable/non-satellite TV (usually on an ABC affiliate) and on Reelz Channel on cable/satellite TV. HE gave it a mild “thumbs up” (rent it) on that show due to its “fun nature.”
I dunno. Superman played baseball in a number of comic book stories, but that doesn’t mean Id want to see a movie about him leading the home team to victory. That is to say, Sherlock Holmes could fight with the best of them, but he very rarely did. The film may get a lot of the details right, but it doesn’t seem to capture Holmes’ spirit.
As I said, the spirit of a guy who settled accounts with his major nemesis by engaging in a battle at the top of a waterfall and throwing him to his death? The spirit of a guy who battled what appeared to be the supernatural (“Hound of the Baskervilles”) but wasn’t fooled?
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It’s like when people crabbed about “Return to Oz” because it wasn’t like the Judy Garland musical even though it was far more faithful to the source material than the MGM film.
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PAD
I’ll point out also
a) that HOUND wasn’t Holmes’s only brush with the apparent supernatural in Doyle’s stories; there was also “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.” (Which also had a rational explanation.)
b) that many Holmes outings made by Hollywood and accepted by lovers of the character had wild action setpieces; witness SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK, MURDER BY DECREE, THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION. The presence of action in this film is not exactly a new development. Had the film’s Holmes been nothing but a swashbuckler, as I feared from the trailer, and as YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES pretty nearly was, I would have been upset. But that was not the case.
c) that several of the beloved Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce films of the 1940s messed with the character far more than this one did, by setting the action in what was then the present day and pitting Holmes against a Moriarty with Nazi loyalties. Guess what. The character survived. Indeed, by being entertaining, by making people want more, the films cemented the character’s popularity for generations.
Or the critic who when reviewing “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” complained about DiNiro’s performance of the Monster since it could talk and was agile.
How long has it been since the last significant Holmes film? Was it ‘Without A Clue’? Yeesh. That really is too long.
I haven’t seen this one yet. In fact, I’ve barely seen any movies the last few years, unfortunately. But I’m having trouble picturing Robert Downey as Homes. Sure, he’s a great actor, and I’m sure he has as much cocaine experience as Holmes, but he’s just too short. Holmes is supposed to be tall and lanky. Other than that, he sounds all right, presuming he can keep the accent consistent.
Trust me, you won’t even notice any height differential. The movie was bloody brilliant!
“As I said, the spirit of a guy who settled accounts with his major nemesis by engaging in a battle at the top of a waterfall and throwing him to his death?”
Offscreen. Or whatever the equivalent would be in prose.
I disagree that because a character occasionally engages in a slight amounts of physical violence in the original material, its in the spirit of the original to play up the violence in the movie. Plot, and focus on plot, matters as well.
In fact, you even sort of agree
“–in this instance by returning to the source material in ways that even those who fancy themselves Holmes fanciers are unaware were ever part of canon.”
If people extremely familiar with the source material don’t recall some of these throw away bits, its because they were far removed from the original focus and themes of the story.
I don’t actually care, mind you, I’m not a huge Holmes fan, but, for example, even though Holmes showed a bit of interest in Irene Addler in the original material, I feel like the LEVEL of interest in Irene Addler in the movie was fairly out of character of what I remember from the original stories. (In fact, the picture in his home in the movie seemed to imply they were ex-lovers, but apparently they weren’t, I guess… it wasn’t exactly clear what the heck was going on with that backstory.)
I thought the film was a collection of half baked Hollywood cliches. Lets have a bridge battle like the recent Bond film (they run from parliment to the sewers to a bridge for a high octane construction site battle, really?), a hiding in smoke Batman bit, Holmes doesn’t learn Moriarty’s name through detective work, but through a “watch the sequel” sort of message at the end, which was just like the end of Batman begins….
The science fiction super bomb plot was silly, and felt more like a James Bond plotline than anything else. (The token, “and then we’ll conquer America!” bit was rather funny, as If I’m supposed to say, “Hey, I’m an American. Suddenly, I can relate to the conflict! Get him, Holmes!” Instead I was wondering why the villain says that America was weak due to the Civil War, since the Civil war happened at least twenty years earlier. It seemed a bit of a stretch.)
The death trap with Irene was out of Saw (or Dark Knight) and made no sense. If the villian wanted to mess with Holmes’s mind he would have triggered the explosive to go off if Holmes tried to disarm it, Irene would die and the prophecy of Holmes not being able to save the victims would come true. (And Holmes would have had to run and drag Watson away instead of rescuing her, since he would know there was no way to disarm the trap without setting the bomb off)
Instead we got a silly action scene with Holmes getting hit by five explosives and surviving, kind of how characters outrun explosives in every blockbuster these days, except in this movie everyone just sort of rolls around then is fine two scenes later, and ready for more high octane action.
I’m trying to give the writer the benefit of the doubt by assuming Blackwood’s plan was to mess with Holmes psychologically in the beginning to stop him from solving the crime, but it appears to have been completely dropped after the opening. From then on, Blackwood’s actions are entirely independent of Holmes. )
There is no payoff for the creepy prophecy in the beginning. Blackwood barely even talks to Holmes in the showdown.
And what was with the repeated shots of a black bird (probably a Crow?) Presumably added by the director? There weren’t many stylistic flourishes in the movie, I would have liked more, but I thought it distracting rather than clever. (In a “Hey look, the director thinks he’s being clever” sort of way)
The killing people in association with the Pentagram thing was probably a cliche before From Hëll did it. You’d think that’s the sort of pattern a master detective might be able to, say figure out in advance of the killings?
(Actually, there was a plot hole when Holmes tells Blackwood’s father that he’s next. We can’t really be expected to believe he has animosity towards the man and lets him die, can we? As far as we see they are a harmless, nutty social club. They have a one off line about ruling England behind the throne, which is never followed up on, and makes no sense in the context of what we see in the film.)
If this movie can be said to be “brilliant” its only the brilliance of combining Sherlock Holmes with every Hollywood blockbuster cliche you have already scene before sort of brilliance.
I guess some of the zen, matrixy stuff was a bit cool. I guess I liked that Holmes got his ášš kicked here and there, since I prefer when heroes aren’t completely infallible. Similarly, his detective work felt more plausible than the originals, and I liked, for example, when Holmes was wrong about Watson’s fiancee getting a divorce.
“If the villian wanted to mess with Holmes’s mind he would have triggered the explosive to go off if Holmes tried to disarm it, Irene would die and the prophecy of Holmes not being able to save the victims would come true.”
It did come true. Blackwood killed three people after his return from the dead, and Holmes wasn’t able to save them. He didn’t find out Blackwood was back in time to save the ginger dwarf, he warned Blackwood’s father that his life was in danger, but was unable to find Blackwood in time to stop him, and ditto for the other member of the Temple (the one who attacked Blackwood and burned to death.)
“There is no payoff for the creepy prophecy in the beginning. Blackwood barely even talks to Holmes in the showdown. ”
No, but Holmes talks to Blackwood. You did notice, that, right? The final scene between them is a deliberate inversion of the scene in the jail cell, with Holmes casually debunking all of Blackwood’s fraudulent magic and saying, without ever actually being so crass as to say, that Blackwood’s attempt to drive him mad by crushing his belief in a rational world with inexplicable, magical events had utterly failed because Holmes is smarter than he is. Just as Holmes was almost silent while Blackwood spoke his prophecies of doom, so is Blackwood reduced to silence by Holmes’ brilliance.
I can’t say I was overly familiar with Holmes or ACD’s works – I’ve never read any of the books, probably seen bits and pieces of some film or two – but my wife and I really enjoyed this film.
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While I’m willing to give some credence to movie reviews, most of the ones that do find fault with this film all seem to be stuck on “But this isn’t Holmes as we (supposedly) know him!”. Apparently too many critics think they’re not allowed to enjoy a new interpretation on an old classic, even less so if it’s a good flick. And this one is.
I can’t say I really agree with PAD’s logic on this one. Yes, Holmes had action and fights in the stories. However, they were small elements that happened occasionally. Shifting the focus to them is like making a James Bond movie where Bond uses his gadgets so often and makes jokes so often that he feels more like Maxwell Smart than 007. A cake might have salt in the recipe, but that doesn’t mean you can put any amount of salt in it and still have something that tastes like a cake.
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I prefer the analysis over at Slate.com. They make the argument that Sherlock Holmes movies have *always* been a little weird. The movies focus on the elements that work best in a visual medium, while the books were written to be books. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we go in knowing that some allowances are always necessary in translation.
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I get what you’re saying to a degree, PAD. Holmes didn’t just sit in a chair and think the mysteries away, these things are elements of Holmes and there’s nothing wrong with having them in a Holmes film. But while I can agree that some critics are being overly picky, I can also see the general idea that focusing on the action is not the same as including a little action.
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My reaction when I first saw the commercials was much the same as when I saw the Constantine movie: Not the same character, not a completely dissimilar character, pretty decent movie when taken on its own merits.
I don’t accept your premise that the emphasis was on the action. This wasn’t “Die Hard.” It wasn’t even an Indiana Jones film. There were a few action set pieces, yes, but they also either moved the plot along or provided character revelation, were unique to the character of Holmes, and highlighted aspects of the character that Conan Doyle himself established.
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The emphasis on action was in the trailers which is, y’know, a big shock. Trailers can go through a romantic comedy, find every moment of running, or smacking someone, or falling down, or pursuing someone in a car, and make it look like like a thrill-ride. And the reviewers who have taken issue with it have emphasized it. I can tell you right now, the screenplay is 173 pages–I know because I have a copy–and the action sequences are a relatively small part. It’s just that they’re memorable, just as Holmes struggling with Moriarty atop the Falls is one of the most memorable moments in the history of Holmes. The emphasis isn’t from the author; it’s from the audience. You can’t fault the creators for that.
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PAD
You keep mentioning the fight atop the falls, but that was a small part of that story and happened *off screen*. The focus of that story was on Watson investigating the clues and using what he’d learned from Holmes to piece together what had happened. The action is kept at arms length. That’s how most of the action is in the stories. Watson saying that Holmes is good at various forms of fighting is not the same as showing Holmes fighting. A demonstration of strength that shows that Holmes *can* fight if he wants to is not the same thing as showing a character actually doing it. Doyle wrote a character who was prepared for those sorts of things, but was very good at avoiding them, until the one time when it got him killed. (Well, killed until he got better.)
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Making a movie where the action is front and center is like doing an X-Factor movie with no noir elements at all, then justifying it by saying that all the noir was in Jamie’s head. Technically it might be true, but it still produces a different feel than what the books have where the art style backs up the way Jamie thinks. This movie is like an alternate take on Holmes, one where things Doyle chose to hint at become significant elements.
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Even if the action isn’t *the* focus of the film, there’s more front and center action than any five Holmes books combined. Plus, that’s not the only difference, the amount of romance Holmes had in the stories would make a very poor romance in modern movies. Watson occasionally got annoyed when Holmes’ violin playing got too maudlin, but other than that they got along really well without the kind of banter in the movie. So there are several tweaks to the formula.
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Again, I don’t consider this to be an automatic bad thing. It depends on the results. Since you enjoyed the results, then the re-imagining worked out.
NOTE: POTENTIAL SPOILERS INCLUDED.
However, just an elaboration on what others have said. With the introduction of the temple of Order of the Four Temples (or something like that) seemingly being taken at face value, I was feeling mildly disappointed at the inclusion of a mystic element. Fit well into the Indiana Jones movies, but less so here. The seeming resurrection of Lord Blackwood was of much less concern, as the idea of various chemicals to effectively slow the metabolism to seeming death has existed in the genre (several genres, actually) for decades at least.
I found the movie quite enjoyable, and liked the way Holmes’ approach to fighting tied to his observation skills. I did feel the bit where he followed Irene was something of a cheat; we had thought we’d seen her path to the coach, but see that she took a much longer approach than it seemed. I’ll be looking at that carefully when I buy the DVD, to see if it’s as big a cheat as I thought. However, the concept of his trailing her and improvising a disguise as he went was pretty much right in line with the original stories.
More Spoilers
Look at that scene again, particularly the “while Irene leaves Holmes’ flat,” scene where he snatches some of Watson’s clothes for his disguise. While it would have been interesting to show a split-screen effect that simultaneously shows what Holmes was doing while Irene boarded the coach to meet with SHHH!MoriartySHHH! some detractors of the film might have dismissed it as comic-bookish! Hey! Maybe Peter can do the Marvel/DC/name a comic book publisher(other than Image, of course) adaptation of this film! I’d buy it in a heartbeat!
TCM marathonned old Holmes movies last night, and I was amused to see elements of many of them in the new movie when I saw it today…including the bit with the flies from a non-ACD movie. 😉
I’m not the only person I know whose first reaction to the “preview of the fight” stuff was to think, “Midnighter!”
I thought they were bees, which would be in keeping with ACD Holmes’ hobbies, but I could be wrong.
As someone who has never read any of the stories and don’t know the history of Holmes and Watson — although I’ve seen a couple of movies — I wasn’t lost at all. It seemed pretty easy to fill in the gaps. Perhaps not being that familiar with the characters was an advantage, because I just wanted to see a decent movie, rather than one that was consistent with past movie characterizations. My only expectation was that there would be some deductive reasoning mixed in with the action, and that expectation was well met.
I didn’t mind the analysis-in-advance thing done twice, either. However, I was expecting it to come up a third time with it not working. I expect that will happen in the second film when Holmes first confronts Moriarty.
The main reason I saw the film was because Robert Downey Jr. was in it, and he tends to make any material work. I’m glad I ignored the critics because, while I didn’t think it was as good as PAD thinks, I thought it very well done. With the mostly dismal selection of movies this holiday season, that easily makes it one of the best choices.
Another thing to remember in the pursuit of an “aunthentic Holmes” is that Doyle himself famously ended up hating the character. When asked how to best adapt the character for other mediums he basically said, “Do whatever you want with him just as long as it makes a profit.”
For the record, I’ve always felt the best Holmes movie of recent times was Jake Kasdan’s “The Zero Effect”. I thought it a masterful retelling of the Irene Adler story.
Nice to see another fan of THE ZERO EFFECT. I agree with you totally, and it’s a shame that film wasn’t better regarded.
He always hated it. Holmes was a parody of a professor he hated, and he ended up creating a overly rational monster. ACD was very much a spiritualist, and a believer in the supernatural.
To be honest I really don’t understand why the Holmes fans were worried. Holmes is nothing more than Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin with a name and location change.
Doyle is history’s greatest HACK.Check out Doyle making an ášš of himself in A STUDY IN SCARLETT
“You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.” Sherlock Homes rose and lit his pipe. “No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin,” he observed. “Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’ thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour’s silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.”
IT TAKES A HUGE SET OF BALLS TO RIPOFF ANOTHER MAN’S CHARACTERS FROM A GENRE HE CREATED WHILE SAYING THAT THE IDEA YOUR RIPPING OFF SUCKS.
The character of Holmes was based off of a real person, a professor of Doyles’ named Dr Joseph Bell. Many incidents in Sherlock Holmes stories came directly from Doyles’ observations of Dr. Bell. The man and his analytical style was well known to a lot of people and we have much more than just Doyle’s word that Holmes was based on that man. So no, Doyle was not ripping off another story.
That, right there, that post right there, is a case of having a little knowledge, being too proud of it, and allowing it to send you right off the rails.
Yes, Doyle’s (or rather, Holmes’s) diss of Dupin in A STUDY IN SCARLET is rather poor form.
Using that moment to declare the creator of the most popular detective of all time a “hack” is wrong-headed in the extreme.
It’s akin to saying
“Harry Houdini was not a great magician! He named himself after Robert Houdin! Houdin sued him for plagiarism! Harry Houdini had NO TALENT WHATSOEVER!”
“Raymond Chandler was not a great writer! He was inspired by Dashiell Hammett! Hammett wrote his great mystery novels ten years before Chandler did! RAYMOND CHANDLER was a HACK!”
“Shakespeare was a HACK! He used stories other people made up!”
And so on.
Also, just because Holmes dissed Dupin as a fictional character didn’t mean that ACD didn’t like the character. How many times did we hear on TV & films the classic line “That’s just a movie/book/TV show! This is real life!”?
Does the film reference Holmes’ drug addiction at all?
(Just curious, given RDJ as Holmes)
Not directly, but it would explain Watson’s concern about Holmes’ need for a case to distract him. BTW, didn’t Watson help him break his habit after his wedding to his second wife in the books?
While the movie is not in spanish theatres yet (eagerly waiting), I think this link from Canadian webcomic artist Kate Beaton is appropiate to the topic.
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=210
Just saw the 1920 SHERLOCK HOLMES, starring John Barrymore. A movie 90 years old. In it, Sherlock Holmes survives at least two deathtraps and overpowers at least one gang of thugs with his physical prowess.
(He also retires from detection to get married at the end. Boo.)
So basically you’re saying that in nearly a century’s time, dramatic portrayals of Holmes haven’t changed, but the ability of fans to complain about it has become far greater.
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PAD
Seems that way. Yay, internets!!
Peter and I don’t always agree (though by now I’ve probably paid for his car with all his books and comics I’ve bought!) but he is dead on with this one. Just because Basil Rathbone left his butch credibility on the THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD set (an amazing film) people think of Holmes as a brainy pantywaist. As has been pointed out Holmes is a boxer and a practitioner of Baritsu, with which he killed Moriarty (no trial or jury of peers- he just knocked him off the cliff).
I don’t remember Watson throwing down, but he always managed to join the tussle when it was time to capture the bad guy. In A STUDY IN SCARLET he used his scarf around the villains neck to hold him. That’s pretty badass.
Adam-Troy- that movie sounds like an adaptation of William Gillette’s play. Holmes married in the end with the full support of A.C. Doyle. Weird, but true.
One of my favorite Holmes tales of all time was not written by Arthur Conan Doyle but in the 1920s by his son Adrian (who wrote a whole book of ’em, which were all pretty impressive themselves.)
In it, Holmes is laid up with his leg in a cast, grumpy because of enforced inactivity. Watson, intent on cheering him up, tells him that this is his perfect opportunity to prove that he can be an “armchair” detective, directing his various agents to solve a mystery without ever leaving 221B Baker Street. Holmes is dubious that an armchair detective can actually exist, but takes the challenge. And ultimately he draws the murderer — a professional boxer — to his own parlor and laying out the case against him, as is his wont.
Except — in a rare miscalculation — Holmes has been so focused on the rare challenge of solving a case under these conditions that he’s neglected to figure out how to subdue the bad guy once he has him; the cops are right outside, but the bad guy is in no mood to just surrender quietly. Holmes is therefore helpless to defend himself when the blackguard advances to beat him to death.
You will now see why this is one of my favorite moments in the Holmes canon — and yes, I consider it canon.
Watson knocks out the bad guy with a single punch.
An astounded Holmes exclaims, “WATSON! How did you do that?”
Watson, milking the moment, rubs his knuckles. “I saw him fight last year, Holmes. He didn’t do well against a right hook.”
Holmes, shaking his head, says, “Good old Watson. You are always full of surprises.”
(I also love the Stephen King tale where Holmes and Watson arrive at the scene of a murder and it’s Watson who immediately arrives at the explanation.)
I’ve read that book too, and while I can’t recall much of the cases themselves, the one thing I was annnoyed with was that this was a book that was supposed to be using the old Watson references to the various untold tales of Sherlock Holmes, and tell those stories. Yet none of the stories in the book, used any of the stuff that was mentioned in the original refecence. Even though they quoted that refence at the end of every story.
Do you remember the name of that story?
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PAD
I’m curious too–it doesn’t sound like any of the stories in Adrian Doyles collection THE EXPLOITS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES which I had thought contained all of his efforts. Sounds like a ripping good yarn.
I hope I’m not misremembering. I do think it was one of adrian’s stories, but I know I got the essential plot points intact.
All right. Now I’m pìššëd. I don’t have the book on hand. If Adrian Doyle didn’t write that splendid moment, who did?!?
One of the key differences in what ACD did in print and what a film does is…one’s in print, and the other is film. Maybe there’s an audience who would enjoy a Holmes film that says he’s a capable man of action, but never shows it. But that film would be avoiding the benefits of actually being a film, in that you don’t have to rely on exposition to convey a point. I find it much more interesting and entertaining to see a scene (or several) that shows Holmes as capable, rather than just having a character talk about it.
Avatar and Sherlock Holmes just have one thing in commen, I will not pay a cent at the box office to see either one.
Sherlock Holmes stories should only be made by the BBC.
It’s true that the action aspect of ACD’s Holmes was underplayed. However, I still think it’s something nice to bring to the attention of people again. Keep in mind, this isn’t the first time that something underplayed in ACD’s original stories suddenly takes on a whole new life. Case in point: Dr. James Moriarty. He’s the most famous villian in literature to not really appear or do anything. He was created just for the purpose of killing off Holmes in “The Final Problem”, and that was done “off-screen” as it were and was later taken back by Doyle in what may have been the world’s first literary retcon. Yet people seem to delight in the character and use him all the time in their adaptations. So, I see no reason that building up Holmes fighting acumen or making more of his relationship with Irene Adler is all that wrong for the character.