Seeing from big budget invested by Warner Brothers, Guy Richie expected Sherlock Holmes to be a blockbuster—-a revenue upgrade of his early movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. So he succeeded, broke the Christmas box office open day record of $24.8million over US and Canada on Christmas day.

American heroism brimmed, compressed old day bosses and thieves into the “bromance” of two. Media fussed about his twist of the two men’s friendship. Actor Robert Downey (stares Sherlock Holmes) referred the characters as “two men who happen to be room-mates, wrestle a lot and share a bed”, most likely for the purpose of publicizing. They argued like married couple and set obstacles for each other’s dates. Another inevitable factor is that even though Jude Law changing his pink shirt into Victorian costume does not take his pretty face away. So we need to understand it is Sherlock Holmes, a character 100 years ago, whom Richie tried very best to modernize, while keeping on track of the original story.

 Not Quite Guy Richie

The director features three in film-making: editing, black humor and fights, which all unfortunately ended up weak this time—-rather than switching scenes between multiple perspectives, all the clips flashed through one man’s mind, over tightly edited. Violin strings picking and scratching paced along, left the audience little space to reason. Holmes’ sarcasm like “no girl wants to marry a doctor who can’t tell whether a man is dead or not” appeared old-fashionly dry. And he barely surpassed the one punch machinegun Mickey (starring Brad Pit, Snatch) with his pre-designed left hook.

 Rachael McAdams’ performance in movies like Red Eye and State of Play proved her strong capability of acting in crime scene. The girl full of guts took the role of Sherlock Holmes’ ex-woman—Irene Adler, screen image transferred from a girl next door to this aggressive figure. At Conan O Brien’s The Tonight Show, she admitted to be asked by Richie to bar her teeth.