It has been said that the detective story is a kind of intellectual game, associated with high adrenaline, narrow escapes, close shaves and successful crimes.

At the centre of the detective story is a protagonist, normally a man of reason and astute reflection, who brings order and answers to the mysteries woven by hidden identities, heinous acts, and crimes of passion and deceit.

Now British producer Guy Ritchie has re-imagined and re-created Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, in a new movie, Sherlock Holmes whose release was set to coincide with the Christmas holidays.

British film reviewer, Mark Adams, has aptly summed up the story of the new movie in which, “Sherlock Holmes (acted by Robert Downey Jr) and his loyal ally Dr Watson (Jude Law) manage to catch the unrepentant ritualistic murderer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) just before he is set to kill again.

Blackwood is hanged, but soon after appears to rise from his grave and sets in motion a terrible plot that links dark arts with deadly new technologies.

The game is afoot and Holmes must race to save England and the Empire.”

However, Adams is not impressed with the new movie as he adds a rider that, “Certainly Sherlock Holmes is no classic. It’s a little confused about whether it’s action-romp or comedy-thriller and often labours as it struggles to fill times between set-pieces. But at the same time it is glossily entertaining and well put-together... a conspiracy adventure that might lack the usual cerebral clue-solving but instead offers punchy police work and dogged detection.”

One thing still evident in Holmes is his legendary intellect that is the asset in solving detective cases that depend on even the smallest of leads — hundreds of years later, he is still unravelling mysteries.

The good news is that the decision to resurrect Sherlock Holmes, over a century after he was created, is a sure testament of Doyle’s genius in inventing literary mysteries with that immortal character.

In the movie, the producers have conjured up almost the same tricks and puzzles employed by Doyle in his prose fiction.

However, some critics are disappointed.

They argue that Robert Downey Jr’s playing Sherlock Holmes is way below average and he doesn’t even come close to the classical Holmes.

Associated Press movie writer David Germain opines that, “Downey’s no Sherlock Holmes, but it works.” Germain further writes, “Take it from a lifelong fan of Arthur Conan Doyle: Robert Downey Jr. is so not Sherlock Holmes…That’s not a hindrance — in fact, it’s a big help — as he and director Guy Ritchie bring Conan Doyle’s dusty Victorian-age detective into the modern world. Enough of the trappings are left in their action romp. Sherlock Holmes — the lightning-fast celebrations, the encyclopaedic knowledge of London, the compulsive single-mindedness, the vain one-upmanship — to make Downey a reasonably faithful embodiment of the figure Conan Doyle created.”

It is normal for book readers to feel disappointed when they watch movie adaptations.

Due to the complexity of movie production, scripts are altered thus “diluting” plots.

It happened with the Oscar award-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire (adapted from the novel Q & A by Vikus Swamp).

There was hue and cry from readers who felt that the movie version was a far cry from the original story.

Fans of the fictional character may be disappointed that the new movie is not an exact representation of the detective as created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but they should take heart in the fact that he has reappeared hundreds of years after he was conjured up by his creator.