The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes, part 2

So after a week off to discuss the fairly shitting nature of The Book of Eli, it's time to get back to my series of posts on Anti-Heroes, which wasn't really a series since there was just the one post before now, but let's not be dicks about this, shall we?

Anyhow, by way of recap:

1. I dig Anti-Heroes.

2. Therefore, Anti-Heroes are cool.

3. An Anti-Hero is a character that despite being an asshole, douchebag or even evil most of the time, manages by the end of the movie to perform a truly heroic act, either because they've changed their character, or more likely, because a kink in that character followed it's logical way toward an act of heroism.

4. This definition is not like everyone else's, but this is my blog, so they can suck it.

5. Larry Flynt and Barry Lyndon are Anti-Heroes.

6. Larry Flynt likes boobies.

So now that that's out of the way, allow me to present, with no further ado....

Anti-Hero #8: Walt Kowolski from Gran Torino

Get off my plane, err... lawn!

ANTI: Racist, violent and bitter, Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski chugs Pabst Blue Ribbon and stalks his front porch, shotgun never far away, hurling insults at anyone -- priests, family, neighbors -- who comes near.

As the movie starts, Walt's wife has just died. No one in his family respects him, and he hates all of them. His granddaughter waits for his death, hoping to inherit his 1972 Grand Torino and a couch he keeps in the basement. One of his sons and his wife ask him whether he's ready to move, so eager are they to sell his house. In this way the movie invites us to sympathize with Walt. Sure, he's a racist asshole, the movie says, but everyone around him is just as a bad.

And he is bad. Every non-white person he meets is a "gook," "zipperhead," "spook" or the like. Any sign of disrespect he seems to consider an offense worthy of execution. When given the chance to tell a joke, he says:

"A Mexican, a Jew and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, 'Get the fuck out of here.'"

Later, he tells a gang member, "I'll blow your head off, go inside and sleep like a baby."

Deleted scene.

HERO: But Walt's heart is eventually melted by a family of Hmongs (Asians) who live next door. Well, not really the whole family, just a kid (Thao, who Walt calls "Toad") and his sister, Sue (who Walt calls "Dragon Lady").

Sue he admires for her strength in facing down three black hoods (Walt comes to her rescue in what's probably the best scene in the movie), and she ends up inviting him to a party and introducing him to the family.

His relationship with Thao is more problematic. Young and aimless, Thao's pursued by a local Hmong gang who want to make him a member. His initiation: stealing Walt's Gran Torino. But when Walt catches him in the act, Thao only barely gets away with his life. Later, his mother and Sue come back to Walt with a request: let Thao work off the debt.

Well, those of you who haven't seen the movie can guess where this is going. Walt and Thao become friends (to the point of Walt getting Thao a job), the gang intimidates Thao, Walt fights back, the gang rapes Sue (so maybe you didn't guess that part) and Walt, though haunted by memories of Korea, knows he must respond.

But how? How does one foul-mouthed septugenarian take on a six or seven gang members without ending up like, well....

This.

The answer is (uh, Spoiler Alert): he doesn't. Walt chooses to sacrifice himself by walking onto the gang's front lawn, threatening them and then pretending to pull a gun out of his jacket. When the gang mows him down in the presence of neighborhood full of witnesses, the cops are called, who promptly haul the gang off in chains.

For Walt, who the movie implies is about die from lung cancer anyway, they bring the meat wagon.

Now I personally have some problems with the logic of Walt's plan. If the gang has truly been terrorizing everyone as much as the movie implies, why would shooting someone on their front lawn be the thing that suddenly makes the neighborhood decide to stand up to them? And even if you're Walt and you assume there's a reasonable chance of this (which given that he is still a racist and despises most of the Hmongs shouldn't be something he assumes), it's pretty hard to gamble your life on just a reasonable chance. I'd have to be sure. Especially since if you die and the gang gets away with it, there's nothing to stop them from terrorizing Thao and Sue without end.

But despite those nagging problems, Walt's choice cannot be called anything but heroic. His revenge is total without being bloody. By sacrificing his own life, he gives his Hmong neighbors (by this time, his surrogate family) the freedom to live theirs in peace.

Anti-Hero #7: Tony le Stephanois from Rififi

Portrayed by Jean Servais

I've already written a bit about the great movie Rififi, so hopefully this will be somewhat shorter than the fucking opus the above turned out to be.

ANTI: A career criminal and ice-cold killer, Tony is simply not to be fucked with. Aging, just released from prison after five years for a jewel heist and stricken with tuberculosis, a friend finds him playing poker in a smoke-filled room in the early hours of the morning. This friend is Jo the Swede, genial and loyal protege of Tony's, who has a son Tony dotes on.

Tony asks about his old girlfriend, Mado. Jo tells him she's taken up with a rival -- scumbag nightclub owner Pierre Grutter. Tony goes to the nightclub and finds Mado a kept woman, dressed in expensive clothes and glittering with jewelery. Tony invites her back to his run down apartment, where he forces her to strip and then savagely beats her.

Tony, Jo and two other men plan an elaborate jewel heist, the 30 minute execution of which has become the inspiration for countless other heist sequences, and which originally got the film banned in some countries for being too realistic. Anyhow, the heist goes perfectly, except for one thing -- one of the men, a safecracker named Cesar Macaroni, has fallen in love with a singer involved with Grutter -- and when he gives her a jewel from the heist, Grutter figures out what happened, captures Cesar and learns everything.

Now in pursuit of Grutter and his men, Tony finds the Cesar tied up alone backstage at Grutter's club. Tony walks up, squints and coldly pulls out his gun.

"I liked you, Macaroni," Tony says. "But you know the rules."

Wrong kind of "rules," dickhead.

HERO: Jo the Swede knows where the jewels are, and when Grutter finds out, he conspires to steal them for himself. His plan? Kidnap Jo's son.

This springs Tony, coughing but still deadly, into action, as he begins a desperate search for the boy before Jo inevitably gives in to Grutter's demands. His search leads him first to find Cesar, who he kills in cold blood, and then out to a house on the outskirts of town where Grutter and his men are hiding.

Knowing that Grutter will simply kill Jo and his son once he has the jewels, Tony launches a one man assault on the house, killing each man in turn before (Spoiler Alert) being fatally wounded himself.

But he grabs Jo's son, and instead of rushing to a hospital, he drives at breakneck speed back into town, dying as soon as he's delivered the boy. Like Walt Kowalski, he sacrifices himself for an innocent, and despite being a violent sociopath and hardened criminal, achieves a moment of heroism.

A few words about The Book of Eli

I'll get back to my Award Winning series on anti-heroes for my next post, but right now I'd like to talk a bit about The Book of Eli, a kodachrome-colored post apocalyptic mess starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman and Mila Kunis.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a stupid plot and cliched characters!

Now a few words about the circumstances under which I watched this movie. First of all, it was the first night of my week long trip to Dallas, which just ended -- visiting my good friend/wildabeast Matt Hickman.

Second of all: we'd... uh, been drinking.

We started at a Mexican restaurant, which are of course pretty rare in Texas, but not before we'd hit a liquor store and a Wal-Mart (and I know what you're thinking -- in Texas that's not neccessarily the same thing) to buy cheap horrible whiskey and flasks.

As Bill Cosby once joked about the huge needles they use to numb your jaw during dental surgery: "this will deaden the pain."

Well, this whiskey, ironically titled Ancient Age (since your chances of become old, much less ancient, decrease every time you drink it), was poured into flasks in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant, after which we drove to a fancy part of Dallas where the movie theater was, found a nearby bar, and began to... well, you know.

We saved the flasks for the movie. And boy did we need 'em, because The Book of Eli, let's just say, proved that if you fool me once (Avatar), shame on you; if you fool me twice (Sherlock Holmes) shame on me... and well, if you fool me a third fucking time, I guess it's time for my nuts to be ripped off and thrown down a well.

Though for the record, it wasn't my idea to see any of these movies. Thanks, friends!

Anyhow, now that I've rambled on enough about what it was like to sit there and down Ancient Age/Coke in a packed Dallas movie theater with Matt, my brother and three girls I'd just met that night, I suppose it's time to talk about the plot.

So okay. We begin with a slow tracking shot of a forest that seems to be raining human skin, where a diseased cat has discovered a dead human body (missed soundtrack opportunity: the Benny Hill theme). The cat comes up, sniffs the body. It looks hungry, ready to feed, only it doesn't realize that closeby a hunter (Denzel Washington, at least we assume, it's never made clear), is waiting to kill him with a comically huge bow and arrow.

Actual screenshot.

After the arrow hits and the opening credits roll, we're greeted with an image that will become mind numbingly repetitive as the movie drags on:

Denzel Washington. Walking.

And walking.

And walking some more.

If nothing else, The Book of Eli proves the wisdom George Miller had to at least give Mad Max a car. Walking, The Book of Eli helpfully teaches us, is incredibly boring.

So anyhow, Denzel has been walking for 30 years. This means that even if you give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he started in Maine, it's taken him 10,950 days to go the 3,300 miles to San Francisco, which means that buff, badass Denzel has been averaging just (uh, wait, just a second, checking my math) 500 yards a day.

Forrest Gump laughs at you, Denzel. He laughs hard.

So anyhow, Denzel rests for the night, "showers" with a handi-wipe, eats his cat, and listens to his iPod. Yes, an iPod, which he's somehow kept recharged and working for 30 fucking years (iPod battery lifespan: 500 charges. Warranty: one year).

Despite the obvious difficulties in maintaing his iPod, Denzel falls asleep with it on and drains the battery, proving once again my theory: people who would survive in a post apocalyptic world for 30 years are incredibly careless.

So on his search for a charger for his battery, and also some water, Denzel begins to encounter bad guys, who he either a) avoids as they rape a woman, or b) murders. Eventually he comes up on a town run by Oldman.

Oldman's character is your basic crime lord -- complete with a bald henchman -- who's been sending roving, illiterate gangs out to look for a very special book (a spoiler I will reveal later on). Apparently all of the "books" of this kind were destroyed in the apocalpyse (a move that, once you know what the book is, seems even more baffling).

So yeah, no prizes for guessing who has the last of the books (Denzel, you idiot), and what happens next (Oldman wants it and Denzel won't let him have it, you idiot).

While in town, Denzel meets the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold (played by Mila Kunis), who's sent up to his room to seduce him and tries to get a look at the "book."

Denzel turns her down. Proving once again my other theory: a man who's been alone for 30 years would definitely pass up a chance at Mila Kunis.

It's about this time that the filmmakers let you very subtly onto the fact that the "book" everyone keeps talking about is, yes, ugh... a Bible (this is achieved with the very subtle visual device of a foot-long cross painted on it's cover). Oldman wants it because he feels he'll be better at controlling the town once he has a hold of it's spiritual vocabulary or something (his point is never made very clear on this, which is probably a good thing since it's moronic).

Anyhow, after a few close calls and a few vaguely stupid action sequences, Denzel manages to get away from the town. After they realize he's gone, Oldman's men try to follow him in a convoy of trucks, only they can't catch up to him.

Remember when I said Denzel averaged 500 yards a day? Even if you're only going 5 miles an hour, that only takes 4 minutes to drive. I mean, even if we're saying he walked 20 miles (which he certainly doesn't, because at one point he has to stop to kill people), the filmmakers expect you believe he got away from them on foot without explaining, you know, how the fuck that happened.

So anyhow, Denzel and Kunis hide out for the night in what looks like an old nuclear silo and manage by the next day to get to a house where a couple of fine old cannibals live. Oldman finally shows up and a huge shoot out ensues where, after a standoff, Denzel is forced to give Oldman the book in exchange for Kunis' life. Oldman then shoots him in the stomach and drives off.

So now, finally possessing the book he has sought for years -- the key to his continuing rule of his shitty border town -- does Oldman actually look inside of it? No. And why? Because that would ruin a stupid surprise the movie leaves for the end (the Bible is in Braille. Gasp! Does that mean Denzel has been blind all this time? Frankly, I dare you to give a shit).

As Kunis drives away with Oldman's men, she decides she doesn't want to be with them anymore, so she makes both trucks crash horribly, though she's miraculously okay, and drives back to be with Denzel....

Who is still. Fucking. Walking. Despite the fact that he should be bleeding to death from a massively infected wound in a stomach he hasn't cleaned for 30 years. I mean, am I wrong about this? How far can the average person who's been shot in the stomach walk? Five hundred yards, maybe?

Anyhow, Kunis comes back to pick Denzel up, and she drives him into San Francisco and toward -- where else? -- Alcatraz. Once they find a boat, Denzel -- gut shot, bleeding -- starts rowing, instead of Kunis, leaving us to imagine what must have been the following conversation:

"I mean, jeez, Denzel. You're bleeding to death. I should really row."

"No way. I'm the hero. I'll row until I pass out, then you row."

"But why don't I just row now? I mean, if you're just going to pass out."

"You ever hear of foreshadowing, bitch? Plus, it turns out I might be blind."

"What? You're blind? But I watched you fire a gun. And beat up some guys. And look at my rack. How have you been doing all of..."

"Don't ask questions. I'm the hero. You ever seen Batman? That's me. I've got Spidey sense, too. And the Force."

So once Denzel passes out, Kunis starts rowing. And fuck if I'm tired of typing out this stupid plot, but, well... a curator (Malcolm McDowell) of things from before the apocalypse on the island takes Denzel and Kunis in, Denzel recites the entire fucking Bible from memory (!) and then of course dies from his stomach wound.

Average time of death from a gunshot wound to the stomach? Fifteen minutes.

Time it takes to recite the Bible? 77 hours, 22 minutes.

The End.

Final thoughts: Despite the clumsy spiritual mumbo jumbo and occassional that-was-fucking-stupid moments, the main failing of the movie is really none of those things, or even the movie's glacial pace (though none of those things help). It's the fact that there's nothing interesting or clever about Denzel's character. These kinds of movies and characters have been done many times before -- The Omega Man, Solyent Green, Jeremiah Johnson, even Tom Hanks' character from the middle section of Cast Away. They're men of action, using their wits and experience to survive in a hostile and dangerous world. Denzel's character does none of that. Besides showering with handi-wipes and looking for water and new boots, we get no sense of the mechanics of his world and how he survives it. I mean, even a comedy like Zombieland (a much better movie, by the way) shows more of an interest in post-disaster rules and ethics. As much as anything, it's this lack of creativity that dooms The Book of Eli to occilate between the boring and the preposterous.

The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes, part 1

So the last time I did a list-based series of posts, things turned out pretty well. Part of that, I think, was due to the fact that the subject matter -- movies about the movies -- is fairly modest in size and scope. There just aren't that many movies to cover, so the chance of missing something or just generally coming off like a douchebag is not really that much higher than normal (granted, this is not saying much).

This series of posts will be nothing like that. The subject of anti-heroes in the movies is, well, huge. A simple Google search for "movies" and "anti-hero" provides more lists than you can shake a wiener at.

As a result, I'm fairly sure I'm a moron for tackling it, a fact I'm sure at least a few of you fine people will remind me of.

Not an anti-hero.

So it will happen this way. Keeping with the human fascination with lists that are divisible by five (for example: five things), this list will cover 10 of the best anti-hero characters in movie history, with the first four entries covering two characters each, and the last two getting their own entries.

At least, that's the plan. Even with just five entries last time, I still managed to fuck things up.

Now a few words on the term anti-hero. It seems that everyone has their own definition of it, so for reference here's mine -- an anti-hero is a character who, despite being immoral, selfish, a killer or whatever, manages to accomplish the chief heroic act in (this case) the movie.

This definition helps separate out a lot of sundry characters we just end up rooting for because they're clever, or put upon, or think they're doing the right thing -- from characters who are mediocre or even bad human beings but who manage in the world of the story to rise at least for a moment to the level of a hero (for whatever reason).

This distinguishes them from characters like Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange or Blondie from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, who despite the fact that we root for them can not be called anything but, you know, protagonists. Which is of course different from a hero.

So now that's all been covered, let's get into it.

#10 -- Larry Flynt

As seen in: The People vs. Larry Flynt

ANTI: In the movie (as in real life), Larry Flynt is a mostly uneducated, philandering smut peddler. Facing a run of bad luck running a strip club in Cincinnati, he publishes the first Hustler magazine with pictorials of the women who dance in his club.

He becomes involved with Althea Leasure, a runaway turned stripper played by Courtney Love, publishes nude photos of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and generally goes out of his way to offend every measure of taste and decorum possible, including, famously, publishing a cartoon that implies conservative icon Jerry Falwell lost his virginity to his own mother in an outhouse.

In court repeatedly on obscenity charges, Flynt is a disaster. He yells repeatedly, fires his own lawyer, wears diapers and at one point throws an orange at a judge.

HERO: But -- beyond the fact that he's portrayed, and by all accounts is in real life, as a completely classless asshole -- Flynt is right. The obscenity laws of the United States are ludicrous. As Flynt at one point says, you can get a Pulitzer for printing a picture of a murder, which is illegal, but go to jail for printing a picture of a sex act, which is legal.

This is madness, and by railing against it, even in his cartoonishly immature circus act fashion, Flynt does a public good.

Though he loses most of his obscenity trials, by the end of the movie Flynt has triumphed in the Supreme Court over the legality of his Falwell ad, solidifying a relaxed standard for satirizing public figures that still influences public satire today, enabling everyone from SNL to stand up comedians to do what they do.

Though he remains someone you'd probably never want to meet, by paying the price both in jail time and lawyers fees, Flynt proves himself a hero. Not just to people who want to look at fake and/or skanky boobs, but to anyone who thinks it's important to make that choice for themselves.

"If they'll protect a scumbag like me," Flynt says. "They'll protect anyone."

#9 -- Barry Lyndon

ANTI: A boobish, naive teenager turned ruthless gambler and profiteer, the story of Barry Lyndon is often described as the odyssey of an opportunist, tracing his humble beginnings in Ireland -- a lost love, a duel, and an escape from the law -- to his eventual profession as a gambler and his cold-hearted seduction of a widow.

As directed by Stanley Kubrick and portrayed by Ryan O'Neal, Barry is anything but sympathetic. Forced to join the Army to survive after being robbed while on his way to Dublin to escape a murder he didn't actually commit (I know, it's complicated), Barry deserts at the first opportunity, stealing the costume and papers of a messenger.

When a Prussian officer discovers Barry's lies, he's forced to join the Prussian army, which is even worse than the British one. Eventually he's brought back to Prussia and told to spy on a chevalier (whatever that is), who the Prussians think is an Irish spy. Instead, he and the chevalier join forces as a gambling team, cheating rich nobles at cards all over Europe (and fighting duels to collect when necessary).

By this point, as the Narrator puts it:

"Five years in the army, and some considerable experience in the world, had by now dispelled any of those romantic notions regarding love with which Barry commenced life. And he began to have it in mind, as so many gentlemen had done before him, to marry a woman of fortune and condition."

Stripped of his innocence, Barry seduces the widow Lady Lyndon, who falls hard (and stupidly) for him. Once they're married, and he has charge of their finances, Barry essentially throws her away, engendering the undying hatred of his adopted son, Lord Bullingdon.

After Bullingdon -- now a teenager -- insults Barry one too many times in front of a party of guests, Barry beats him mercilessly, rendering Barry a social outcast among the upper crust he's been trying so hard and so expensively to join.

HERO: The only good thing in Barry's life, other than money, is the son he and Lady Lyndon have, an annoyingly precocious kid named Bryan, who softens Barry's cool facade.

When Bryan dies in an accident, Barry falls into a prolonged drunken stupor, giving Bullingdon an opportunity to challenge Barry to a duel over mastery of the Lyndon estate.

The duel scene -- justifiably famous -- proves to be both Barry's undoing and his greatest triumph as a human.

Despite having both reason and opportunity to kill Bullingdon, and a lifetime of war, gambling and murder to harden him to the idea, he chooses not to. Bullingdon accidentally fires into the ground, so Barry -- weary and aging -- does as well. After trying to buy his way into the title and style of a gentleman and failing horribly, Barry finally finds a measure of grace and nobility in his mercy toward Bullingdon.

Bullingdon, though he has the bloodlines of a Lord, fails the moral test. Though in a twist that's very Kubrick, his very act of failing a moral test leads to the passing of a social one, since Barry's resulting injury allows Bullingdon to take control of the Lyndon estate and banish Barry to Europe.

But even though he loses the duel, Barry rises for that brief moment into heroism, showing mercy on a young kid who is clearly shitting his pants. The cold world of the movie punishes him immediately for this act, but still, after a lifetime of being a heel, Barry finally rises above.

More secrets of Avatar revealed!

Thanks to my buddy Ryan for sending me this...

Sherlock Holmes: Brilliant detective -- dumb movie

No, not that one.

I'll admit, right up top, that part of my problem with Guy Ritchie's version of Sherlock Holmes is irrational. After all, as someone somewhere has certainly said, "this isn't your father's Holmes." Which of course can be translated as, "yeah, we changed, uh... everything. All we left is the name because, you know, that's good for marketing."

So my problem is with that general idea, which I despise. But strictly in terms of the Holmes character, I shouldn't really care, since I've never read a Holmes book or seen a Holmes movie.

But at the end of the day, a reboot like this isn't as much about how much is changed (The Mask of Zorro changed a lot about Zorro and was still pretty good), but whether the movie itself is, you know, a piece of shit.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Sherlock Holmes is not (at least completely) a piece of shit. But all things considered, it's a pretty lousy movie that gets even worse the more you think about it and the more you compare it to the movies it's trying to be.

For instance:

Plot Point: Holmes and Watson's partnership is coming to an end because Watson is getting married. Holmes uses every opportunity to sabotage Watson's plan to leave.

Done better in: Zero Effect

Starring Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller in a modern takeoff of the Holmes/Watson dynamic (of which, of course, there are many), Zero Effect probes this same assistant-leaving situation in a much more satisfying and motivated way. Pullman's Darryl Zero, for one, is a much weirder and worse boss to Stiller's character than Downey's Holmes is to Watson. Also, Stiller's character is a lawyer and has a fiance who doesn't like Zero.

The point is: he clearly has a future without Zero, making his reluctance to leave him (Zero is helpless without him, and Stiller digs that) an interesting character point to explore.

Jude Law's Watson isn't given anything like this to play. We're simply told he's leaving Holmes' employ for reasons like he's messy and a bad roommate. Why the lack of a real reason? Because it's only there to add some tension and give them something to talk about. Beyond that, the movie can't be bothered to answer.

Plot Point: Holmes is a drug addict of some kind. At one point he's high on something used for "eye surgery," leading to the obvious question, was there really eye surgery in Victorian England?

This will hurt, and then you'll die.

Done better in: House, among other places.

Wikipedia helpfully informs me that Holmes' drug of choice in the original stories was cocaine (then legal in England), injected in a seven percent solution as a way to alleviate his boredom when he wasn't working.

In Sherlock Holmes, he drinks and does (mostly unnamed) drugs, simultaneously flailing about and inventing things, as in one particularly useless scene, where he observes he can get flies to fly in semicircles when he plays discordant notes on his violin.

Unfortunately, the "brilliant man who's also an addict but can somehow keep it together" has been done so many times before that it's hard to do anything new with it, and Sherlock Holmes proves over and over again it's not up to doing anything hard.

In the TV show House (which is based in many ways on the Holmes character), his addiction to painkillers is a direct result of a medical misdiagnosis of an infarction of the leg, making his limp, and his addiction, a constant reminder of the importance of getting the right answer. This is obviously more interesting than a brilliant guy who abuses drugs because he's bored (and when he's not bored, can instantly snap out of it).

At the root of all this is simply a problem of the movie being dumb. Holmes and Watson are supposed to be brilliant and innovative, but instead of gathering clues and deducing things logically, they mostly seem to arrive at a place and say a few things that don't make sense until the bad guys show up, at which point a big fight starts that lasts long enough for the screenwriters to go, "whew, that was close. We almost had to write something clever there."

This is in stark contrast to the best kind of mystery fiction, where the clues are laid at least partially in view, drawing the audience in in their attempt to solve the mystery for themselves. Sherlock Holmes can't be bothered (or the filmmakers simply weren't talented enough) to do that, so the movie decides leaves you in the fucking dark about everything.

For instance (and this is a spoiler), at one point a character is revealed to have not been dead because (you didn't guess it) he had ingested a suppressant derived from a rhododendron plant.

Uh, what? Was there any way for me to know that (they do show a leaf to a rhododendron plant at one point. Or at least, I thought it was a rhododendron plant. It just looked like a leaf to me)? I mean, is such a thing even possible to extract from a rhododendron?

Apparently not.

The whole end of the movie is like that, where in one long, breathless speech, Holmes tries to explain the totally confusing things we've been watching in ways that are either totally implausible or just goddamn made up.

No, we're told. A character didn't spontaneously combust. An odorless, colorless flammable liquid was dropped on him by some kind of Victorian-era rain machine, and his gun was rigged to spark so that he exploded into flames. No, this didn't also ignite the long stream of droplets he left behind him on his way in here. What makes you say that?

You get the idea. As my brother said, "Don't bother to explain it if you're going to do it with bullshit like that. I didn't really need to know."

I'll take it a step further.

I didn't need to see the movie at all.

One and a half stars out of five.

Postscript: it also bears serious noting that in getting the great Robert Downey, Jr. to play Holmes and the also pretty great Jude Law to play Watson, they really had the chance to do something interesting with the material. Having those two actors eschew interesting dialogue in favor of what it by my count at least three fight scenes is a crime to celluloid that someone should be punished for.