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I’m as big a fan of Sherlock Holmes as they come — when I was a kid, it was Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys, and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for me. I read everything I could get my hands on, and more often than not, that happened to be detective stories. I loved the Victorian tales of the man who lived at 221B Baker Street — the prim and proper era contrasted with the dark alleys and shifty behavior of would-be do-badders who themselves ended up caught in the eccentric master of deduction’s traps.

And so when I heard that Guy Ritchie was making a Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, I was interested in seeing it. Sherlock Holmes, for all of its fame, is a very British, specifically London, bit of mythology, and Guy Ritchie, in his own way, is a very British, specifically London, director, so I figured it could work. Downey, Jr. has been getting ever more brilliant lately, in between Iron Man and his both hilarious and genius turn in Tropic Thunder, and while Jude Law doesn’t exactly have the portly frame that you’d usually associate with Watson, I figured he’s a good enough actor to pull it off. Turns out I was right on all of those counts — while the Sherlock Holmes movie doesn’t exactly capture what I love best about the series by Arthur Conan Doyle, those three filmmakers play their parts well, and it’s a respectable action flick.

Note I said action, not detective. While this Sherlock Holmes is called a master detective and does indeed have the powers of observation and deduction the character is known for, he’s not so much a crime solver as an dysfunctional action star. There are some excellent scenes and setpieces in the movie (from a drydock complete with ship being constructed to the framework of the London Bridge), and the whole thing looks terrific — a dirty, mysterious Victorian London. The writing keeps things moving along well, and lets these actors put their new shines on these classic characters. But in the end, this is an action movie, so much so that it even sets up the predictable franchise sequel by the end.

Which is kind of a shame. The movie does play around with the tradition — most visions of Holmes have him as more of an arrogant professor type, always correcting Watson and two steps ahead of the game (which is, of course, afoot). But Downey’s (and Ritchie’s, I presume) Holmes is more a victim of his powers of observation and deduction rather than in control of them. They’re put to some new uses (it turns out Holmes is an excellent fighter, because he is extremely good at deducing what will happen when he breaks his opponent’s leg — that was mentioned in the stories but never explained or portrayed in the way the movie does it), but more than anything, Holmes seems befuddled by all the things he’s seeing around him. His powers are an obsession themselves, and have wrecked his life, his relationships, and made him grossly dependent on Watson, rather than the way the books have portrayed it, as often the other way around. Despite the new take on the old character, Downey is entertaining as always, and despite putting on a British accent, can deliver a line (like the trailer’s “Beneath this pillow lies the key to my release”) with just the right amount of flair.

Rachel McAdams is also in the film as Irene Adler, someone whom Holmes always describes in the books as “the woman,” the only female to ever beat him at his own game. In the books they were never lovers (Holmes wouldn’t have time for such “inscrutable” games), but in the movie, it’s heavily implied that this is so, and having her around gives another fun angle to Holmes’ and Watson’s dependent bromance, and even pushes the plot along a few times.

But for all of the interesting twists on the mythology, the movie itself fails at the detective side of things — the mystery surrounds a cultish, possibly magical threat, and when the solution finally does come, we’re not even given a chance to guess at it ourselves. The pleasure of a detective story is being given the clues all along (mixed in, of course, with a nice bunch of red herrings and the occasional twist), and trying to figure it out yourself. In the movie, we’re never given half of the information Holmes is, and when he finally does figure it out, it all falls into a good vs. bad action movie plot, with everyone racing to save and/or destroy the day, depending on which side they’re on.

That’s the real problem with making a Sherlock Holmes movie: the reason the books were such a blast to read is because Holmes was always reaching conclusions long before anyone else did. Those powers of deduction had him beating everyone to the punch (including the reader), and the last few pages were Holmes simply explaining what we’d missed all along. I’d even go back into the stories, only to find, sure enough, that the answer had been right there on the page. We saw one thing, he saw another completely, and he’s the genius who figures it all out, every time. There’s none of that here. Holmes drifts off into a blur of a montage, and emerges from the other end with an answer that doesn’t make much sense and requires another stunt scene.

Not to say that it’s a bad flick. It’s fun, well-acted, a little long in the middle, but speeds to a relatively satisfactory conclusion. But the things I loved about Holmes in the old stories aren’t here. There are new qualities in their place, and they’re very clever, but when I want a good detective yarn, I’ve got to go back to The Speckled Band, the Red-Headed League, and all of the other classic tales.