Mark Strong Reveals Sherlock Holmes Secrets

Total Film have interviewed Mark Strong for their latest issue and he's been happy enough to discuss not only his naughty, naughty character in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, but also how the film will climax.

Strong's villainous role is as Lord Blackwood, a Satanist who uses fear to manipulate and grasp power in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to that practiced by Alastair Crowley. Strong says of the scowly bad boy:

There's a touch of Dracula about him. He needed to have an element of showmanship about him by virtue of the fact that he's trying to persuade everyone around him that he's so in league with the Devil that he's able to conquer death. I just wanted to make him an equal adversary of Sherlock Holmes.

After the break are spoilers on the film's final action scene. Click at your own peril.

Strong also revealed the ultimate showdown between Holmes and Blackwood and it's definitely compatible with the public image that's been created around the film so far:

There's a fantastic sequence where we duel to the death on a half-built Tower Bridge. It's a perfect way to end the movie, Robert and I hammering seven bells out of each other on top of this swinging bridge with Victorian London as a backdrop. It's going to be amazing.

Actors are typically coached not to reveal such (supposedly) pertinent information, but frankly I don't see the harm in them telling curious journalists and then journalists passing it on to folks like you and me, as long as it's labeled fairly and clearly as a spoiler.

I'm pretty sure I've never had my enjoyment of a film hampered by knowing the ending before going in – indeed, the films I enjoy, I tend to enjoy them for multiple viewings and if I don't, it hasn't been down to knowing the story up front. I appreciate why many folk wouldn't want to know where the plot of a film is going as they're tracking it but, personally, I'd read every script, peruse every storyboard, visit every set, invade every editing room, and squeeze every director for juice if only I could.

Sherlock Holmes will be released on Christmas Day in the States, and I would imagine Boxing Day in the UK (complete with Holmes punching people in themed TV ads). For the leads alone I'm interested in this more than any prior Ritchie flick – indeed, in spite of every prior Ritchie flick.