Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I cared little for the first Sherlock Holmes movie, finding Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law to be just about the only truly bright spots of the film. My review can be found here.

While director Guy Ritchie, his crew and his stars return for the sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, with pretty much more of what they imagine audiences loved about the first film (a bona fide box-office smash with over half a billion dollars in global earnings) this time they've brought a far more coherent, if slightly cliched script with them, one which doesn't have the stink of Simon Kinberg all over it.

This story, written by Keiran and Michele Mulroney and very, VERY loosely based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1893 novel The Final Problem, pits Holmes (Downey, Jr.) against his archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), amid brewing tension between France and Germany towards the end of the 19th century. A series of bombings in both countries being blamed on Anarchists is pushing both countries to the brink of war, with the whole world almost surely destined to follow suit.

Dr. John Watson (Jude Law) is about to get married to his longtime fiance Mary (Kelly Reilly) and pays a visit to his best man, Holmes, who is meant to throw him a bachelor party, but who ends up recruiting him for his latest investigation, in which he seeks to tie the current tension between France and Germany, and a series of murders of several people all together with Professor Moriarty as the common denominator. Holmes has intercepted a letter being handed from one agent of Moriarty's to another and endeavors to track down its intended recipient, a gypsy (Noomi Rapace). Their investigations naturally bring the pair afoul of Moriarty and before long they find themselves in a race against time to save Europe from war and themselves from Moriarty's terrible wrath.

As stories go, it's not the most original, even if it only borrowed a few details from The Final Problem. The idea of someone trying to profit from the carnage of world war is not exactly novel, and was in fact explored as recently as the utterly forgettable film adaptation of Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Ritchie, however, profits from Mulroney's script, which sets up the characters, the conflicts, and the action more efficiently than the muddled effort of the original film did. Ritchie brings back plenty of the 300-style slow-mo action that he employed in the first film (and of which I am still not much of a fan), but at least I liked the choreography better this time around. Downey Jr. and Law are both extremely capable as action heroes, and Ritchie's fight scenes give RDJ in particular a chance to show off, even more than the first film, the Wing Chun Kung Fu that helped him kick his drug habit.

The good news here is that, as outlandish as a lot of the set pieces here are (such as the gunfight on a train), the action still feels more judiciously staged than that of the first film, and more organic to the overall story somehow. To think, everyone, from cinematographer Philippe Rousselot to film editor James Herbert to composer Hans Zimmer, has come back and that the only thing significantly changed here is the writing team. Well, one thing that significantly livens up the proceedings is the inclusion of Holmes' brother Mycroft, wonderfully portrayed by Stephen Fry, even if I had a really hard time looking at him butt naked.

The best part of the movie is that the banter and squabbling between Holmes and Watson, integral to my enjoyment of the first film, is very much intact here and brought to the next level even. Downey, Jr. and Law really do have a fantastic chemistry and I can't imagine any other two actors in the roles. It's fortunate that Sony didn't push through with the planned Sacha Baron Cohen-Will Ferrell pairing they had in mind for their decidedly more comedic adaptation; it just wouldn't have been as good.

4/5