Sunday, June 26, 2016

My Thoughts on Sherlock Holmes

I've wanted to watch this for a few years, and since it's one of the few movies I haven't read a review for on Plugged In (a review website by Focus On the Family), I didn't know really what to expect. Outside of a relatively "normal" mystery in Victorian London.

To tell the truth, I was unsure about how much I'd like a Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock - but I was quickly proven wrong. There were several times that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. I think my absolute favourite part of the whole movie was when Sherlock jumped out of a window with an electrically-charged fork-thing in hand and ended up face-planting on the cobble-stone street below.

Now, when I said I was expecting a "normal" mystery, I meant something along the lines of: someone's murdered and they end up chasing the murderer all around the city.

Someone was murdered, several people in fact. But this is where it gets really weird.

More often than not, I forget how weird the Victorian era. The Victorian era was filled with strange beliefs and odd rebels who wished to push the boundaries of science. And that was the backbone of this Sherlock Holmes story.

The movie opens with Sherlock making his way down into a stone room under a large, multi-floored building, taking out bad guys as he goes. Soon, he comes upon a balcony looking over the room and peers down at a strange ritual taking place. Low, evil-sounding chanting fills the air as a young woman writhes on a stone table. The chanting's coming from the man in a long, ornate robe, a hood obscuring his face. As the chanting continues the young woman slowly lifts a knife, poised to thrust it into her own chest.

But before she can do that, Sherlock is there, taking out bad guys.

The chanting, robed bad guy is arrested and locked away - and it turns out that the scum-bag is a lord, Lord Blackwood in fact. And he's known in London's most prominent cult as the most evil individual to them, that he wields dark magic.

I wasn't exactly comfortable with how much of the cult was in the story, because it was borderline Satanist and there were pentagrams and rituals, etc. But I enjoyed the characters - I think Watson was my favourite. I love the Victorian era, even if London in that period was really depressing.

I really hope that the sequel is a little more normal, even if that normal is Sherlock and Watson chasing after Moriarty at night. I just don't like to watch movies that make me squirm in my seat. Though I did laugh...

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