Although keeping the two main characters, Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and Watson (Jude Law), and a detective style where Holmes knows more than is ever revealed until solving time, the adventures of these two are visualised rather more frenetically by Guy Ritchie than the classic source material suggests. The result is a buddy movie somewhere between Shanghai Knights and Lethal Weapon and the straight man/funny man pairing is perfect to keep the film ticking over through its investigative phases.
Downey Jr continues his run of top form and Law is an excellent sidekick and comedy foil without bringing the self satisfied smugness I associate with a number of his other performances.
Another delight is the sets. 19th century London is visualised with some panache and achieves a marvellous gothic feeling without resort to the exaggeration of a Tim Burton set.
A highly entertaining, if un-taxing introduction to a new franchise.
Tuesday 19 January 2010
Monday 11 January 2010
The Road
In a post-apocalyptic world a father tries to protect and feed his son while travelling to the sea.
The apocalyptic event precipitating the film is only hinted at but it's effects are brilliantly realised on screen. No animals survived. All plant life has died and everywhere is ash. A lack of colour that isn't quite black and white gives the landscape a haunted, lifeless quality far beyond the hopeless feeling evoked in the not dissimilar Children of Men.
The key to this film though is the central pairing of Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit McPhee . If you didn't believe in or care about this father and son's struggle for survival this film would be an unbearable durge.
Mortensen as usual is outstanding as the gaunt man who knew the world before fighting to keep his own humanity for the sake of his son's. As with Christian Bale in the Machinist, he alsovappears to have shown a finger to food to attain just the right set of hollow eyes and protruding ribs. Surprisingly for a child though, Kodi matches him scene for scene as a child who only knows of a better life from the stories of his father but still has hope somewhere still holds better fir him.
This isn't a bright uplifting film but it is engrossing and a pervasive sense of danger lends the film a constant tension relieved only by the rolling of the credits. If you can bare the downbeat tone this is an outstanding film. An excellent start to 2010 moviegoing.
The apocalyptic event precipitating the film is only hinted at but it's effects are brilliantly realised on screen. No animals survived. All plant life has died and everywhere is ash. A lack of colour that isn't quite black and white gives the landscape a haunted, lifeless quality far beyond the hopeless feeling evoked in the not dissimilar Children of Men.
The key to this film though is the central pairing of Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit McPhee . If you didn't believe in or care about this father and son's struggle for survival this film would be an unbearable durge.
Mortensen as usual is outstanding as the gaunt man who knew the world before fighting to keep his own humanity for the sake of his son's. As with Christian Bale in the Machinist, he alsovappears to have shown a finger to food to attain just the right set of hollow eyes and protruding ribs. Surprisingly for a child though, Kodi matches him scene for scene as a child who only knows of a better life from the stories of his father but still has hope somewhere still holds better fir him.
This isn't a bright uplifting film but it is engrossing and a pervasive sense of danger lends the film a constant tension relieved only by the rolling of the credits. If you can bare the downbeat tone this is an outstanding film. An excellent start to 2010 moviegoing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)