<P> Sherlock Holmes is a 2009 British - American neo-noir mystery period action film based on the character of the same name created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . The film was directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Susan Downey and Dan Lin . The screenplay , by Michael Robert Johnson , Anthony Peckham and Simon Kinberg , was developed from a story by Wigram and Johnson . Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law portray Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson respectively . In the film , set in 1890 , eccentric detective Holmes and his companion Watson are hired by a secret society to foil a mysticist 's plot to expand the British Empire by seemingly supernatural means . Rachel McAdams stars as their former adversary Irene Adler and Mark Strong portrays villain Lord Henry Blackwood . </P>
who plays the bad guy in sherlock holmes
Irene Adler and Mark Strong portrays villain Lord Henry Blackwood