It's a souped-up Victorian crime romp with Holmes and Watson reinvented as wisecracking action heroes

• Peter Bradshaw
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 22.30 GMT

 

 

It is, as the great sleuth might have said, a three-pipe problem. How does cackling master-criminal Guy Ritchie keep getting away with it? How on earth did he manage to perpetrate those two egregious crimes Revolver and RocknRolla without getting his collar felt?

This lordly super-villain is well known as a master of disguise, donning a pearly cap and smearing himself with odorous jellied eels to pass as a cockney rapscallion, in which garb this patrician scofflaw carries out his dastardly acts in film studios, before changing back into tweeds and vanishing away to his country estate.

Now he has managed to steal hours of precious time belonging to cinemagoers everywhere for his latest silly escapade. It's a souped-up Victorian crime romp with Holmes and Watson reinvented as wisecracking action heroes, played by Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law - a two-man league of pretty ordinary gentlemen.

As ever, Ritchie has some bareknuckle fighting in slow-motion interspersed with very-quick-speeded-up-motion and there's plenty of diddly-diddly Irish folk music in the background. I fear producer Joel Silver may feel like grabbing Ritchie and plunging with him down the Reichenbach Falls.

cackle - gęgać, paplać, rechotać

dastardly - łajdacki, podły

don - przywdziewać

eel - węgorz

egregious - skończony, wierutny

garb - strój, ubiór

intersperse - przeplatać

patrician - arystokratyczny

perpetrate - popełniać

plunge - nurkować, zanurzać się

rapscallion - łotr, szubrawiec

romp - swawola, zabawa

scofflaw - przestępca, uchylający się od wyroku

sleuth - szpicel, detektyw (przestarzałe)

wisecracking - dowcipny

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