Movie review of Sherlock Holmes (2024)

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details of classification and consumer advice lines for Sherlock Holmes
• a review of Sherlock Holmes completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 26 December 2009.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie’s message

A synopsis of the story

The film begins with Sherlock Holmes (RobertDowney Jr.) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) rushing through the back streets ofLondon while fighting off numerous villains in a bid to save a young woman fromritual murder by Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Apparently Lord Blackwood ishigh ranking member of a secretive order known as The Temple of Four Orders, anorganisation that has been employing the dark arts for centuries, and whosepatrons include high ranking government officials. Blackwood is found guilty ofthe murder of several young women and sentenced to death by hanging, but beforethe sentence is carried out Blackwood tells Holmes that his execution is partof his grand diabolical plan.

Blackwood is Watson’s and Holmes’s last casetogether as Watson is about to marry his fiancée Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly)and move out of Baker street.With no new case Sherlock becomes bored and depressed until he is paid a visitby Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) an adversary out of Holmes’s past. Irene claimsto be working for an anonymous employer who wishes to find a missing man.Intrigued by both Irene and her anonymous employer, Holmes agrees to take upthe case with Watson going along.

Following his visit from Irene Adler, Holmesreceives a visit from Scotland Yard who require Holmes’s assistance to investigateclaims that Blackwood has come back from the grave and the pair find out thattheir battle with Blackwood is not over.

Secret societies; the supernatural

The film contains segments of intense andstylised action violence with minimal blood and gore depicted. Some of theviolence is depicted in slow motion with accompanying narration by Holmes andthe scene then repeated at normal speed. Examples include:

• While waiting to attack a villain, Holmesvisualises (we see slow motion images and hear narration) how he will assaultthe man. We see Holmes punching the man in the throat, the chest and the leg.Following the slow motion images, we see the same sequence played back atnormal speed.
• Watson grabs a man by the neck and Holmespunches a man to unconsciousness. We see a man elbowed in the face and kickedin the stomach. Watson uses his cane to break a man’s arm. A man is kicked inthe stomach while lying on the floor.
• A woman dressed in white lies on asacrificial altar holding a large knife in both hands as though she is about tostab herself with the knife. She is stopped from stabbing herself at the lastminute.
• Sherlock Holmes. shoots holes in the wallof his apartment while bored.
• Mary Morstan throws a glass of wine in Holmes’s face andstorms out of a restaurant. Watson punches Holmes in the face in response toHolme’s verbal attack on Mary.
• We see Holmes in a boxing ring fighting anopponent bare knuckle style. The scene contains both slow and normal motionsequences with Holmes narrating the slow motion segments. Suring the scene wesee Holmes punching his opponent in the jaw and face dislocating the man’s jaw(we see the jaw being dislocated in slow motion), head butting the man’s chest,punching the man in the back slapping the man across the ears. We see Holmes’sopponent bitting Holmes on the ear and punching Holmes in the side of the face.
• We see a prison guard lying of the floor ofthe prison holding his throat as if choking; the assault appears to be theresult of supernatural forces.
• One scene contains images of Lord Blackwoodbeing hanged. We see Blackwood hooded with his hands tied behind his back dropthrough a trapdoor to dangle at the end of a rope while his body twitchesslightly. Later we see Blackwood’s dead body laid out on a table.
• Four men attempt to assault Irene Adler inan alleyway. Irene pulls out a baton and strikes out at her attackers, knockingdown three and holding a knife at the throat of the fourth before sending themon their way.
• A fight between Holmes and Watson and agiant man. Involves knives, an electric cattle prod like device, hammers and alarge chain.
• Holmes wakes up stripped naked and tied toa bed head after drinking drugged wine.
• An old man is sitting in a bath when thebath begins to bubble and boil by itself as if caused by supernatural forces.The man turns dark around the eyes and begins to die as a second man pulls aring from his finger.
• A man holding a gun attempt to shoot asecond man, but when the man fires his gun he explodes in flames, the cause ofthe flames appearing supernatural. We see the burning man run and then jump outof a second story window to crash down on top of a carriage.
• Holmes and Watson go to a slaughter houseto find Irene Adler hanging by her hands from a meat hook with flames shootingout from gas pipes around her as though she is about to be cremated. Holmesclings to Irene and wraps a protective sheet around them both as they passthrough the flames uninjured. Irene still tied to the meat hook, which isattached to an overhead conveyer belt travels toward a band saw in the processof sawing pig carcases in halves with the machine being stopped only when Ireneis centimetres from being spliced in two.After leaving the slaughter house, Watson triggers a trip wire thatcauses a series of explosion that totally destroys the slaughter house withHolmes, Irene and Watson engulfed in flames. Later we see Watson with a bloodywound to his side and hear that he removed pieces of shrapnel from the woundhimself.
• Holmes is engaged in a stylistic martialarts fight
• Watson uses his cane to fend off a numberof assailants. He pulls out a sword hidden within the cane, using the sword toassault his attackers. After subduing his attackers, Watson takes them prisonerand we see him firing his revolver to move the prisoners along.
• Watson uses his legs in a scissor-likemanner to put a hold on a man
• In one scene Holmes, Blackwood and IreneAdler are standing on top of London Bridge, we see Blackwood slap Irene acrossthe face and push her off of London Bridge; Irene is uninjured. Blackwood fallsfrom the bridge himself and becomes entangled in chains that wrap aroundBlackwood’s neck, strangling him.
• Watson and Mary walk into Holmes apartmentto find Holmes dangling from a rope as if he has just hanged himself. However,it is a mock attempt by Holmes to imitate the manner in which Blackwood fakedhis execution.

Material that may scare or disturb children

In addition to the above-mentioned violentscenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturbchildren under the age of five, including the following:

• Images of a dead corpse in a coffin withits front teeth missing and maggots crawling over its face.
• While Holmes and Watson search a dead man’slaboratory we see dead frogs dissected and pinned to the bench top, human andanimal skulls, occult like drawings and images.
• One of the film’s villainous characters isa giant sized man with a badly scarred face.
• Younger children may be scared by theimages of an older man dying in his bathtub under supernatural circ*mstances.We see the bath water boiling in an unnatural manner and the man with a look offear on his face with his eyes sockets becoming darker the more the waterboiled. Later when the man’s death was being investigated we see a secret roomfull of all manner of dark black-magic like objects including pieces of boneand hair etc.
• While Holmes and Watson search a slaughterhouse we see images of numerous pigs’ heads lying on a counter and numerousheadless pig carcases hanging from meat hooks. We see images of a bandsawsplicing pigs’ carcases in two with the two halves falling to the ground.

Children in this age group are also likely to be disturbed by the above-mentioned scenes

Children in this age group are also likely tobe disturbed by the violence and scary scenes described above

Younger children in this age group may also bedisturbed by some of the violence and scary scenes described above.

Product placement

None of concern

Sexual references

The film contains some occasional low-levelcovert sexual references. Examples include:

• Sherlock Holmes accuses Irene Adler ofmarrying a man for his money asking her how much she got for a ring he gave her.Irene replies that the man was boring and he snored.
• When Irene Adler is accosted by several menin an alley they tell her that they will cut her a deal because she is sopretty.
• When a chamber maid walks in on a nakedSherlock handcuffed to a bed, Sherlock says “The key to my release is under thecushion”, and she runs out of the room. Later when Holmes is relaying the storyto a police officer, he says, “Chamber maids used to be such a liberal breed”.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some partial nudity and sexualactivity in this movie, including:

• Irene Adler wears low cut tops that revealher cleavage.
• Irene kisses Sherlock Holmes on the lipswhile he is unconscious.
• We see Sherlock sitting on a bed naked withhis legs crossed in front of him. His hands are handcuffed to the bed head andthere is a cushion placed strategically in front of him
• Holmes drops the key to handcuffs down thefront of Irene Adler’s top.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in thismovie, including:

• Holmes smokes a pipe.
• People in restaurants, including Holmes andWatson, drink wine.
• After participating in a boxing match wesee Holmes swiping a bottle of unknown alcohol from a counter and drinking fromthe bottle. We also see people watching the boxing match consuming alcoholstraight from the bottle.
• Watson arrives home to find Holmes in aslightly intoxicated state with Watson telling Holmes “You know what you aredrinking is meant for eye surgery?”
• Sherlock drinks wine that had been druggedand falls to the ground unconscious.
• On several occasions Holmes tests theeffects of various drugs on Watson’s dog; the dog recovers on all occasions.

Coarse language

The film contains one or two instances oflow-level coarse langue and name calling. Examples include:

• Good god, what the hell, proper idiot,human canoe, bloody panic.

In a nutshell

Sherlock Holmes is an entertaining actiondrama that targets a wide ranging older audience, although the plot is somewhatpredictable.

The main messages from this movie are:

• The supernatural can always be explained bylogical deduction.
• The war against evil and crime is ongoing.

Values in this movie that parents may wishto reinforce with their children include:

• friendship
• self sacrifice
• fearlessness and bravery

This movie could also give parents theopportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and theirreal-life consequences, such as:

When bored, Holmes is depicted as a self-destructivemanic depressive. Parents may wish to discuss how mental health issues impacton those inflicted as well as those around them.