Robert Downey Jr. hams up the lead for all it's worth with a jittery eye-rolling performance, delivering his lines in a nearly indecipherable faux-Shakespearean accent which at times threatens to spill over into the Fast Show's 'I was very, very drunk indeed' character, while Jude Law clucks around him like an exasperated mother hen as his long-suffering sidekick. They kick some ass, bicker and then kick more ass. Oh, and save England from an occult master criminal's hokum scheme in the meanwhile.
It should all be terrible; there's far too much reliance on action to shunt the plot forward whenever Ritchie panics at the prospect of having more than a few consecutive minutes of actual detective exposition on screen. So it's with some shame that I confess to having been quite entertained and able to put up with Ritchie's large-looming foibles for the first time since his debut features. Downey Jr. is never less than watchable, the eccentricities in the re-imagining of the characters and the frenetic music, apparently frequently nicking Kusturica's orchestras, are cute rather than just irritating and the fantastical recreation of Victorian London looks amazing. Overengineered fluff, sure, but at least the thrills work for once.
6/10
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