- The soundtrack is great.
- John Watson is a clever fellow. He's a war vet and an MD, for Pete's sake; he's not some bumbling nincompoop who follows Holmes around, he's just a bright guy who invariably looks less so by comparison.
- Holmes is out of his gourd half the time, which also is something that tends to get washed out in most adaptations.
- Mary Morstan, Watson, and Holmes play off each other just perfectly. Holmes and Watson, obviously, are the backbone of the movie, and their relation is perfect, but Mary's relations with Watson and Holmes is also just where it should be.
- The boxing scene was a good idea; it's a big Victorian sport and it gets across Holmes' physical skill well. (The Holmes VOs, not so much. Ugh.)
- The Canon references (Mycroft, the bullet-hole VR, Adler, and even (I guess) the sequel-bait at the end) are reasonably restrained and well-done.
- Holmes explains it all at the end, and it makes perfect sense. Admittedly, most of it relies on making up chemicals with just the right (implausible) properties, but that's a long and cherished tradition in Sherlock Holmes stories, so it gets a pass. And the explanation for surviving the hanging was so elegant that it pretty much makes up for that.
Minuses:
- The bit ten minutes in where the movie ground to a screeching halt for the director to say: "Look! The Tower Bridge under construction! We'll be having a climactic fight scene there! On the Tower Bridge! The climax! Right there on that bridge!" was a little unsubtle.
- Irene Adler should not be a badass action girl, and there is nothing romantic between her and Sherlock. Weird friendly-antagonistic tension, yes. But there's nothing sexual about it.
- The random heroic American. Uh...?
- The mysterious cult in general. It's way to prominent in the movie to be left vague, and introduced from out of nowhere, and just generally not well fleshed out or thought out. All of the kabbalah stuff meant that I spent pretty much the whole first scene with them wondering whether they were actually a magical cult per se or just some benevolent version of the Elders of Zion. Frankly, I'm still not entirely convinced they weren't.
- The crime is way too large scale, IMO; Holmes deals with things as they interest him, not by importance. Which isn't to say he wouldn't take it, just that it didn't need to involve "the fate of the world hanging in the balance!" And, again, it didn't need that much action. Holmes gets where he does by thinking, not by blowing things up.
- The sequel-bait at the very end is kind of in-your-face.
Overall ranking: It's not great, but still a reasonable movie, and the fact that it gets right what a lot of Holmes adaptations get wrong largely makes up for the fact that it gets wrong what others get right. 3/5
