Rationale – Film Review
What I wrote was a film review on the newly released Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Richie. I wrote this as a critique from the daily mail. My intention of this piece was to show that Guy Richie tried to turn Sherlock Holmes into a hardboiled detective and failed. To begin with I tried to adapt the tone and language of an average film reviewer. I did that was by adding a lot of descriptive adjectives as I summed up a part of the movie, and I feel that worked quite well. I then began to compare the genres hardboiled detective and classical detective. I discussed how the two types are perceived and concluded that in this case, the director had failed properly fuse the genres. I went listed some of the traits of the characteristics of a hardboiled detective, to further show that Sherlock Holmes had not been turned into a hardboiled detective. I then made sure not to completely destroy the movie, as I quite liked. Instead used misdirection in that I had the audience consider the fact that Guy Richie was making a commercial movie, which there are limits to. I then spoke to both the plot and narrative, and how the movie has failed to provide an open plot that continues beyond the point that the narrative ends, which a true hardboiled detective story does. One thing that really frustrated me in making this piece was the fact that blue banner newspaper readers do not necessarily care about genre, which I was obliged to speak to. Otherwise I like my finished product, and I feel that I successful proved that in spite of Guy Richie’s strong attempt to turn Sherlock Holmes into a hardboiled has failed.
