Q&A: Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes

On the surface, Sherlock Holmes represents new ground for Guy Ritchie: It’s the director’s first literary adaptation, his first period piece, and the first of his films to call for extensive computer imagery. And it’s by far the most ambitious of his movies. But at its core, it’s vintage Ritchie. Like the early hits on which he made his name—Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch—Sherlock Holmes is a tortuous escapade through London’s underbelly, propelled by witty banter and male camaraderie. (Ritchie seems to have avoided female heroines after the disastrous excursions that were Swept Away and, presumably, his marriage to Madonna.) “My original take was that I wanted more Butch and Sundance than a traditional Holmes and Watson,” the director tells me. Casting off the Holmesian iconography dating back to classic screen adaptations—from Basil Rathbone to Basil the Great Mouse Detective—Ritchie has reimagined the perspicacious detective without disavowing the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle. He simply chose to shift his focus to more unfamiliar aspects of Conan Doyle’s work, e.g. his interest in the turn-of-the-century British martial art known as Baritsu. In the course of our conversation, Ritchie explains why Robert Downey Jr. was the perfect Holmes, not just because he had mastered the elusive R.P. accent, but also because he could inject the classic British narrative with his uniquely American vitality. He also says he would sooner wear a deerstalker hat than have Holmes wear one.