Robert Downey Jr. is Sherlock Holmes…

Our inspectors are baffled by the mystery of it: somehow, our favourite Victorian hero was mistaken for Inspector Gadget. Guy Ritchie resurrects London’s drug-reliant super-detective and ditches his deerstalker hat for ninja skills and fruity dialogue. Accompanied by Watson (Jude Law), a plot involving the occult and other destructive powers sends Mr. Holmes on a mission fraught with explosions, bare-knuckle boxing and ridiculous acrobatics.

See him leap into the Thames from Westminster Palace, blow up half of London looking for criminals and get chained to a bed by a whore. Arthur Conan Doyle’s quick-witted 18th century legend is dragged, kicking and screaming into the box office of the future, making a name for cheesy one-liners and walking stick martial arts. A sense of humour failure is expected from the purists.

But luckily that’s all changed now. Jude Law went to Afghanistan on a mission of peace yesterday, to call for a one-day ceasefire that would allow food deliveries and vaccinations to take place. But only if it’s called The First Annual Ceasefire And We Love Jude Law Day and everyone is given a Jude Law mask and a badge that says ‘Jude Law Is My Hero And Also A Fairly Underrated Actor’.

That’s a lie. But while Jude Law’s Afghan peace visit might seem like an embarrassingly hopeless display of celebrity vanity, it might just work. After all, it’s a little-known fact that the Taliban universally considers Jude Law’s portrayal of a sexy robot prostitute in AI to be the pinnacle of artistic achievement in all of history. It might work after all!

We’ve always thought that Jude Law was good at three things – miraculously and naturally reversing the effects of male pattern baldness, having it off with the staff and peacefully unifying all regions of the world forever all by himself.

No, really, he is. Look at the Bosnian war – it was a tangled mess that looked set to rage on for centuries until it abruptly came to an end in 1995, just after the release of Jude Law’s little-watched joyriding Britflick Shopping. Coincidence? No? Pah, next you’ll be telling us that the 2004 expansion of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation didn’t have anything to do with I Heart Huckabees.

Anyway, now Jude Law has turned his focus onto Afghanistan. According to reports, Jude Law is pushing for September 21 to become a nationwide ‘Peace Day’ where all sides of the conflict can lay down their weapons to facilitate 24 hours of safe food deliveries and vaccinations.

Apparently this is the second year in a row that Jude Law has visited Afghanistan, after making a top-secret trip last year to help with the country’s vaccination program. It was such a top-secret visit, in fact, that nobody at all knew he was even there. Well, apart from the crew of the forthcoming documentary that Jude Law was making about it. He’s not stupid. Speaking in Kabul yesterday, Jude Law said of his last visit:

“I was hugely moved, not by the conflict that I have read so much about, but by the people’s courage and the people’s sense of hope. It seemed that they really want to make the peace day work. And they did. People recognise the day because they recognise that lives could be saved.”

According to Jude Law, this Afghanistan documentary of his is “the most important film I have been part of”. What, more important than the Alfie remake? Don’t do yourself down so much, Jude.

Actually, while it’s easy to mock Jude Law for the weird self-belief that he can bring peace to Afghanistan simply because he happens to be Jude Law, you have to admit that – theoretically at least – the Peace Day does sound like an incredibly good idea. And what does Jude Law want in return for his promotion of the cause?

Nothing more than a road named after him and a series of mile-high golden statues depicting seminal scenes from his movies that flash the world ‘hero’ in every language on Earth directly into the sky every night. The man should be applauded.

But it's OK, because Terry Gilliam has found a way to work around Heath Ledger's death in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – Heath Ledger's character Tony will be fleshed out with appearances by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, who have all stepped in to remember their friend.

Not just that, but the recasting of Heath Ledger's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus role also sheds some light on the character Heath was set to play. It looks likely that Tony will be Irish, mumbling, dressed as a pirate and a bit of an uptight dick. Or something.

Heath Ledger's death stopped several things in their tracks all at once. Foremost of these was the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, of which Heath Ledger was set to play the biggest part. That's been solved by Warner Bros developing a hush-hush 'Look! Katie Holmes isn't in this one!' strategy that should prove more popular than ever. 

But Terry Gilliam's new film The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus also took a near-fatal hit when Heath Ledger died, because Heath Ledger had already started filming his scenes when he overdosed. The death could have pushed The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus onto the pile of other unfinished Terry Gilliam projects, but now everything's been saved.

According to reports, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law have all signed up to play 'incarnations' of Heath Ledger's character Tony, meaning that the movie is back on track. Variety reports:

Despite the tragic death of pic's star Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell have all signed on to play Ledger's character, 'Tony,' in the film. "Parnassus," which is being produced by William Vince ("Capote"), Amy Gilliam and Samuel Hadida's banner, was shooting in London when Ledger died from an accidental overdose January 22nd. Ledger's character is transported into three separate dimensions in the fantasy pic; these new worlds, which Ledger accesses via a paranormal mirror, will now be inhabitated by Depp, Law, and Farrell.

It all sounds too good to be true – there's a good chance that the film will be a success, with some people going to see it to watch Heath Ledger's last performance and others going to see it because it'll star Jack Sparrow off the funny pirate film – but we're not so sure.

This tactic still represents a massive risk for Terry Gilliam, because now he's not just making a film about a 1,000-year-old man leading a fantastical theatre troupe across several dimensions, but a film about a 1,000-year-old man leading a fantastical theatre troupe across several dimensions that's got Jude Law in it. He couldn't have made it less popular if it was called The Baby-Raping Adventures Of Captain Stab.

Read more:

Trio steps in for Ledger – Variety