Guy Ritchie: Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

5. Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Guy Ritchie made his blockbuster debut with Sherlock Holmes, a cyber punk-esque foray into the works of writer Arthur Conan Doyle, with none other Robert Downey, Jr. as the infamous British detective. Ritchie actually famously didn't fancy Downey, Jr. in the part at first, envisioning the movie as something of an origin story for a much younger Holmes - presumably it was the success of Iron Man a year earlier that changed his mind. And yet Sherlock Holmes and Guy Ritchie don't really meld all that well together; there's an awkward and occasionally jarring feel to this blockbuster, which features a confusing and unbelievable plot that sees Holmes out to stop a criminal named Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). It's somehow entertaining for the most part, but rather confused in others. Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, playing his Holmes' long-suffering partner Dr. John Watson, have a good dynamic, but the movie gets lost in its attempts to be visually appealing - there are slo-motion fight scenes and aesthetic quirks, but none of it really means anything: it's an empty blockbuster, and one that doesn't leave you with all that much to chew on. Could that be, perhaps, because Ritchie essentially gave up on making more personally-inclined films when he agreed to helm this studio blockbuster? Is that the reason it ultimately feels so very unlike him? Hm...