Hero Moment of the Week – Sherlock Holmes

No groaning, please.  You had to know this one was coming, surely.  Me, a former card-carrying Sherlock Holmes Society committee member?  Writer of two Sherlock Holmes books?

I was at the cinema, lining up, ticket in hand, on Boxing Day.  I stood in line for an hour.

It was sooooo worth it.

And just in case you’re figuring I’m a huge Robert Downey Jr. fan, I’m not.  I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan.  Robert Downey Jr. is too short (Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be six foot two), but I managed to overlook that…er…shortfall because the writer and Downey Jr. and the director between them did everything else perfectly.

There was no tongue-in-cheek except when it was needed.  There was no campiness, no silliness, no over the top stupidness.

They even remembered to give Watson a limp because he was shot in the leg during the war — a story fact that most movies overlook.

They managed to blend the fact that Sherlock Holmes was a highly emotional man who used his genius and logic to hide his true nature, and his bohemian, slipshod ways perfectly with the seamier side of proper, laced-in late Victorian London.  It was everything I love about the Sherlock Holmes canon.

For instance:  They didn’t overlook the fact that Holmes was brilliant at martial arts and boxing, but that he wasn’t a natural at it — rather, he learned it by rote, and applied it logically.  So in a scene when he was about to attack a man, you saw him mentally calculate how he was going to do it…then he did it: fast, efficiently and deadly.

I could rave on and on about the movie and the perfect touches Downey Jr. brought to the role, but I don’t want to spoil it for you.  Instead I’ll urge you to go see the movie for yourself and fall in love with Sherlock Holmes.

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