In cinemas across America tomorrow, December 16, 2011, audiences will be seeing the second installment in the new Sherlock Holmes movie franchise established by actor Robert Downey Jr. just two years ago with his action-packed suspense thriller "Sherlock Holmes." The Holmes given to us by the sublimely talented Downey Jr. as directed by Guy Ritchie and co-starring Jude Law as Watson was an action hero as he had never been portrayed before. This was a Holmes who was not at all the type of man to sit and solve mysteries with his intellect, and occasionally get involved in a bit of running around and sometimes a fight or two with the bad guys as we
had come to expect him. No, no, this was a Holmes who, along with Watson was very much in the thick of the action, and fighting his antagonists, tooth and nail. When this Holmes premiered in 2009, I wrote an article for Suite 101 in which I compared Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes with a similarly off-beat and highly controversial view of the great sleuth that was directed in 1970 by the great Hollywood director, Billy Wilder, "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes". Both films dealt with some of the more, shall we say delicate facets of Holmes nature, or at least facets of the character that had to be handled gingerly when the character was first conceived in Victorian England of the 1890's. These were Holmes
use of illicit drugs, and his attitude towards women. Before you go to see "Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows", or after you've seen it, take a few minutes to read or re-read what I said about Downey, Wilder and the original Holmes back in 2009. And be bllloooown away, once again!!
Either cut and paste this address into your toolbar, or if it's highlighted, just click it on:
http://suite101.com/article/robert-downeys-private-life-of-sherlock-holmes-a186985
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