photo: Guy Ritchie, Ludacris, Jeremy Piven, Idris Elba, Gerard Butler
During Thursday’s press conference regarding RocknRolla, Guy Ritchie was asked to describe his upcoming Sherlock Holmes film, set to star Robert Downey Jr. Ritchie said, “It’s going to be very contemporary… Originally Sherlock Holmes was this intellectual action man. I think what happened was they played down the action man aspect [in previous films] because they just didn’t have the means of executing the action in an interesting way. Well, we do have the means and we have the technology.”
So it seems that Downey Jr.’s Sherlock is going to kick considerably more ass than previous incarnations, but still be smart. Ritchie used the term “intellectual action man” several times, and while it is communicative, it’s also really clumsy. Let’s hope the full title doesn’t end up being Sherlock Holmes: Intellectual Action Man.
Maybe Ritchie’s fascination with tough guys who still visit the library comes from somewhere personal… More after the jump.
In talking about RocknRolla, he divided his time between waxing philosophical about the changing cultural landscape of London and defending his street cred by hinting at his crime-world research ties. I asked him if he felt RocknRolla contained an aspect of social commentary and he said, “England no longer has the identity we understood it to have, it has become international as New York has become international. So the commentary is, I suppose, how identities have shifted. … It’s commentary on how crime has shifted.”
He also cited the example of business changing, whereby Russian oligarchs don’t bother to bid on real estate, football teams and the like, but instead just buy at an exponentially increased price. Expanding on the idea of an exponential cultural shift that’s taking place in globalized cities, Ritchie said, “Technology is the reduction of time, space, and motion, and it’s done that to culture, too. So everything is moving exponentially, so fast that we can’t keep tabs on it. So this is like a documentary before we can’t recognize [London] for the identity it once had.”
Wait a minute. I know he was using the word “documentary” figuratively there, but still, isn’t this that movie whose trailer pretty much makes it look like Snatch 2? How many of these ideas are really going to be in the film? I might be wrong, but I think what most people are expecting from this movie is: punch, explosion, gunshot, funny quip from Jeremy Piven and/or Ludacris, repeat.
Honestly, though, I was genuinely interested (and maybe even impressed?) with what Guy Ritchie had to say about cultural shifts in mega-cities. Could this mean that he has matured as a director? Or will RocknRolla just seem like Snatch with a shot of nostalgia for a London so stylized it’s unlikely it ever existed in the first place?
Originally posted on:
SpoutBlog