Guy Ritchie is hardly the first director to get Sherlock Holmes wrong. - By Nathan Heller - Slate Magazine

The Case of the Weird Sherlock Holmes AdaptationsGuy Ritchie is merely the latest director to perpetrate crimes against the legendary detective.

By Nathan HellerPosted Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009, at 10:12 AM ET

Here's a mystery: Exactly what kind of movie is Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes supposed to be? This two-hour charge into a Victorian underworld of murder, sorcery, and combat CGI purports to be a spin on the adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's pipe-smoking detective. But it's more like an action-adventure sampler platter. Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes emerges as a raffish superhero with razor-sharp reflexes and the roundhouse skills to match. We're told he has a "mask of logic," though he spends most of his time getting in fights and sweating like a happy-hour veteran in a dive bar. With Watson (Jude Law) and a pair of stylish sunglasses, Holmes lurches messily from clue to clue, chasing Lord Blackwood, a villain in a leather trench coat who studies magic and aspires to "remake the world." Despite its title, Sherlock Holmes is not a tribute to the great cerebral detective. It's a reminder, if you needed one, that some key part of Hollywood's imagination never quite got unplugged from The Matrix.