Hardly.
Imagine if they made a version of Romeo and Juliet where at the end they pulled out their madd ninja skillz and Mercutio joined them (because he secretly had on armor under his clothes and was waiting for the right moment to re-emerge) in an epic battle against those who opposed the star-crossed lovers, and maybe threw in a plot involving a strange looking bomb under the Vatican that they had to defuse. I tend to think that people who were familiar with the original would be rather disgusted by that.

The same applies to making Holmes into a fighting machine who plans out his blows about seven moves in advance and then pulls of a martial arts move to take down his opponent. Doyle said that he was skilled in boxing and made a reference to something called "baritsu" to explain how he defeated Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls (Doyle only brought Holmes back from the dead because of public outcry, so he had to come up with something), but otherwise he never uses his fists.

I still say that the resulting film was crap. Even taken on its own it was irritating to watch.
( Wanderer, Tue 4 May 2010, 16:12, Reply)