Blu-ray Movie Reviews

BBC/Warner Movie ••••½ Picture ••••½ Sound •••½ Extras •••½

“The game is on!” So flows the contemporary parlance of Sherlock Holmes, brilliantly re-imagined as the world’s only consulting detective in modern-day London. In these three 90-minute episodes, Benedict Cumberbatch portrays Holmes as a driven, testily observant, Web-browsingon-on-the-fly supersleuth. His blogging chronicler/flatmate, Dr. John Watson, is played by Martin Freeman as a resourceful, sometimes reverent, sometimes annoyed but mostly eager associate.

Holmes’s science of deduction is depicted onscreen CSI-style, with floating white chyrons of text, symbols, and formulas representing his lightning-quick thought processes. The 1.78:1 cinematography fetishizes London with regal shots of Trafalgar Square and the Swiss Re financial building (a.k.a. “the Gherkin”). And then there’s the famous 221B Baker Street, which percolates with clutter.

The best marriage of high-def picture and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound on this two-disc Bluray set happens during the duo’s Episode 3 battle with a Golem in a planetarium amidst a presentation gone awry, as flaring spotlights and psychedelically blinking visuals are accompanied by the swirling sputters, squeals, and squelches of the staging’s damaged soundtrack. Extras include a couple of commentaries, an hour-long pilot version of the first episode, and the Unlocking Sherlock documentary, which is keenly informative but a wee short at 33 minutes. No matter. As Holmes insists, “All that matters to me is the work.” And the work is bloody good.