Sherlock Holmes: When sleuth is stranger than fiction

Sherlock Holmes (12A)

Rating:

Verdict: Great visuals, rubbish script

After three flops in a row, diamond geezer Guy Ritchie tries his hand at Hollywood hackery with this big-budget attempt to create a new action-adventure franchise to rival Pirates Of The Caribbean.

The transformation of its creator’s cerebral sleuth into a brawling, bare-knuckle fighter and action man with designer stubble will have most Arthur Conan Doyle fans howling like a whipped hound of the Baskervilles.

The plot is frequently incomprehensible, and Rachel McAdams’s poorly photographed femme fatale could be edited out of the picture without making much difference. Most of the time, I hadn’t a clue what she was doing, and she didn’t seem to either.