Sherlock Holmes - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Sherlock Holmes



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
As I boy I devoured every mystery I could from Dorothy Sayers, to The Hardy Boys, and of course culminating with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s infinite classic tales of Sherlock Holmes. The man has been one of THE most played parts of all time, with literally dozens of actors portraying the infamous British detective over the course of countless decades. While Benedict Cumberbatch pretty much solidified himself as the king of modern interpretations, Robert Downey Jr. and Guy Ritchie made an incredibly unique take on the character over a decade ago (and of course the subsequent sequel and hopefully THIRD film in the franchise coming out next year), with a quirky little film that is almost more Guy Ritchie than it is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Back in 2009 Robert Downey Jr. was making a rocky re-emergence after his fall from grace back in the 90s. He was an 80s and early 90s darling, but then became a cautionary tale for all of Hollywood as the man went from being an A-list celebrity to making 8 cents an hour scrubbing pizza trays in L.A. Country lockup time and time again. His drug addiction pretty much turned him from a massive pretty boy to the pity of everyone around him, as he fell down the addiction path that plagues so many film and music stars. However, he came out of that path and did the unthinkable. He actually started to rebuild respect in Hollywood, even though most directors and studios didn’t want to touch him. He starred in a few moderate films, but it wasn’t until Shane Black’s Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang that Downey Jr. was finally shot back into the super stardom path. Couple that with 2008’s Iron Man, and suddenly RDJ was a household name once more. With the world at his fingertips, he decided to take on another legendary character, this time in the form of the famous Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes has to be taken with a grain of disbelief if you’re a long time fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, or the countless other presentations about the cloak and hat wearing detective, as they share almost no real correlation to each other. With Guy Ritchie films you know that you’re in for an oddball adventure, and Sherlock Holmes is no different. RDJ plays Holmes with a much more physical, and much less aristocratic air about him. Instead of being whimsy and posh, Holmes is a brutish character, who loves his cocaine (which ironically is very canonical to the books), is a depraved womanize (or at least attempts to be), and loves to get into physical altercations in his mysteries.

That being said, Sherlock Holmes is a fun movie. The tale revolves around Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his assistant Dr. Watson (Jude Law) figuring out if someone has “returned from the dead”. Recently Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a notorious murderer, is put away and executed for his crimes. However, there are clues that Blackwood is back again, despite being 6 feet under, and it’s up to the crime solving due to figure out who is behind this hoax (if it is a hoax), and bring THEM to justice as well. It doesn’t help the matter much that he is forced to match wits with the only person to have ever bested the infamous Holmes, that being none other than former flame Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), who has a mysterious game of her own going on, with a much more mysterious (and infamous) mastermind pulling strings behind the entire thing.

Sherlock Holmes is pure Guy Ritchie fun to the core. That means, lots of fast paced dialog, witticisms and cultural references, as well as linguistic word play and banter at all times. Don’t forget high paced action, quit cuts galore, and a sort of frenetic feverish pacing that can only be described as “Guy Ritchie”. The characters themselves show little resemblance to the novels from Doyle, but they still do have elements of himself at play. It’s as if Guy Ritchie took the highlights and less known quirks of the detective and put him inside the same mold that he uses to create his famous British Gangster films, and then hit Frappe. The results are usually “off the wall”, but still a fun jaunt if you allow yourself to disassociate this iteration of Holmes from the more typical and “faithful” presentations of the iconic detective. The story itself is well done, with a strong villain (haha, yes, pun intended) and great camaraderie between RDJ and Jude Law. It’s quick witted, charming, and a true guilty pleasure for this Holmes fanatic.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some startling images and a scene of suggestive material




4K Video: Video:

The 1.78:1 framed encode shows dramatic improvement over the VC-1 encoded Blu-ray from 2010 (this was just before the time frame where Warner switched over to AVC exclusively), as the Blu-ray was always a bit problematic. Not problematic due to sloppiness, but rather due to the Blu-ray not being able to resolve the highly stylized Guy Ritchie film. The image was always a bit soft, with poor low light replication and milky blacks. Not to mention being overly brightened and the gray/brown/sepia look of the film looked kind of murky as a result

Now, with the 4K UHD disc that’s completely cleaned up. The digital shoot looks impressively clean, and the specific monochromatic color grading is much better replicated in 4K. The blacks are deep and inky, and the dull colors that do pop through are much richer and sharper. Faces are delineated amazingly well, and the fine detailing is very solid. The before mentioned color grading and stylistic choices do make it an issue for being razor sharp, but Sherlock Holmes was never a film that looked reference, even in theaters. However, this 4K UHD is a rather impressive leap over the aging Blu-ray and easily makes for a good decision when trying to upgrade.







Audio:

The same 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix found on the Blu-ray is found on this 4K UHD disc (no Atmos or DTS:X track), but that’s not a horrible thing as it was always a stellar mix. The high flying action, explosions, and general score make for a thrilling sound scape, with wonderful use of the surround channels (such as when Holmes is doing his bullet time calculations during a boxing match, or the explosions during the warehouse brawl), and blended with a copious amount of bass as well. The dialog is always crystal clear, and balance between the action and the quieter, more front laden, bits is superb. It was a great track some 10 years ago, and it still is a great track.





Extras:

• Maximum Movie Mode
• Focus Points
• Sherlock Holmes: Reinvented

Final Score: ​

While Guy Ritchie movies tend to be an acquired taste and sometimes miss their mark, he certainly is one of the more entertaining director’s out there, and is really known for his British gangster films as his true magnum Opus (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels along with Snatch are true jewels), but he did a very solid job with Sherlock Holmes, despite his own deviations from tradition. It’s a fun flick, with high flying action, Robert Downey Jr. as he was re-exploding back onto the acting scene, and a nice 4K UHD presentation for the upgrade. Audio is the same mix as was found on the Blu-ray (sadly only Beetlejuice got an upgraded audio mix), but the video is a rather nice upgrade over the mediocre Blu-ray. Worth checking out if you enjoyed the movie on DVD and Blu-ray.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Eddie Marsan, Mark Strong, Robert Maillet, Geraldine James
Directed by: Guy Ritchie
Written by: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Novels and Short Stories), Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, Simon Kinberg
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 HEVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, German, Spanish, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Thai DD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Thai
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 128 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: September 1st, 2020

Recommendation: Recommended