Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Strong, Eddie Marsan, Kelly Reilly
Running time: 128 mins
Rating: ★★★★

I DARE say that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle purists will have a few grumbles but the rest of us can breath a sigh of relief at the latest screen incarnation of the Baker Street detective. Lock Stock director Guy Ritchie has given Sherlock Holmes a thorough going-over for the multiplex audience that doesn’t destroy the literary creation’s reputation.

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Familiar Holmes paraphernalia, such as deerstalker hats and cocaine fixes, are absent – replaced by carriage chases, cliffhanger action scenes and Holmes throwing punches in bare knuckle fighting.

But it works, not least because Robert Downey Jr’s wise-cracking Sherlock and Jude Law’s handsome sidekick Dr Watson make a fine pair of partners in crime-busting. That’s right – Jude Law in good film shock horror. The actor with more dud films that I care to count has a fine rapport with Downey Jr that makes their partnership fun to watch.

The plot, as you’d expect from a Holmes case, is far from straightforward. They help catch a serial killer who turns out to be the unremittingly evil Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, typecast as villains, perhaps, but he does them so brilliantly). Stopping him isn’t easy as he appears to come back from the death after his hanging.

Complications arrive in the not-unpleasant shape of two women – one of Holmes’ old flames, the American Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) and Mary (Kelly Reilly). Both represent a threat, Irene to the case and Mary to his relationship with Watson as she plans to marry the good doctor.

Ritchie retains some of his flashy editing style, although not overdoing it, but the film is at its best when staging old-fashioned hokum, such as a ding-dong of a fight on an under construction Tower Bridge.

It could be the start of a whole new Sherlock Holmes franchise.