I don’t share my favorite movie critic’s fear and loathing of Guy Ritchie (hey, I liked Snatch well enough), but I was concerned about this one. I’m no Holmesian or whatever the hell they call themselves, so fidelity to source material wasn’t particularly important to me (although is there really so much single-stick in the stories?), and I quite like Robert Downey Jr.

The problems going in for me were Jude Law, who can be as dead a fish as ever flopped onto the screen; the slow-mo stuff in the trailer; and the constant quippery. Happily, Law was excellent — he played the respectable Army doctor straight, but with a wonderful sense of timing with the down-market Robert Downey; the slow-mo stuff actually is a useful cinematic device; and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is so well acted and developed that the quippery works.

I would have cut McAdams, whose character appears to be only there to reassure us that Holmes is straight, and it goes on a bit too long, but the balance between comedy and action is well handled, Eddie Marsen and Mark Strong are both great, and the evocation of the time and place is very well done. They’ve also set up the whole business for a sequel in the most obvious way possible; cut the McAdams and about 25 minutes, and it could be fantastic.

Until then, I highly recommend it.