Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

It was almost two years ago that I posted my review for Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. This fact depresses me. I've been doing these for over two and a half years, and still, my audience peaked back in February of 2010. Nonetheless, we soldier on.

Any time you take a trip into sequel town, you the first instinct is to compare the two. Let's get that out of the way now. A Game of Shadows is, overall, not as good as its predecessor. That being said, there is some value to this second movie.

Firstly, it introduces Noomi Rapace to everyone who hasn't seen the original Millenium trilogy. Whether I know how to pronounce her name or not (I don't), Rapace is going to get a huge push to the forefront of people's minds. According to Box Office Mojo, A Game of Shadows is the clear forerunner for this weekend's box office numbers. Millions of people are going to be introduced to an actor who, despite sharing the screen with plenty of the Downey Jr./Law power combo, seems to be taking the movie more seriously than anyone else. I won't bother making any bold predictions about her being the future of Hollywood or anything like that (because really, who cares?) but I can say that she seems to know what she's doing and I wouldn't complain about seeing her name attached to future projects.

A Game of Shadows continues the strange, strained relationship between Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law). While Watson is preparing to get married, Holmes continues to lurk on the outskirts, seemingly sabotaging Watson's life in order to equalize his dependent relationship. Although entertaining, Holmes' behaviour is pretty hard to nail down. It's not so much that Holmes straddles different diagnoses, he seems to drop in and out of social grace on a moment's notice. He's a weird hybrid of whatever the story needs at the time.

You've got one part super-intelligent guy who clearly suffers from, what TV tells me is, Asperger's Syndrome. His social skills are limited to a select few hard-pressed peers. Equality is based on intellectual acumen and a willingness to adhere to his unconventional methods.


Sound familiar?

Then you've got the other side. The well-constructed, tough, physical specimen whose charm and good looks forgive any kind of "crazy" that may be present. This is also the side that leads Holmes to do things like dress in drag, refer to him and Watson having a "relationship" rather than a partnership, and says things like "Come lie with me, Watson."



There's a certain mentality you need to have going into this movie. You can't expect that everything's going to be wrapped up in a neat little package of logic. Instead, you need to realize that this is a movie that takes its style just as seriously as its substance. For every master stroke of intelligent deduction, there's an action scene for the sake of an action scene. There are collapsing towers, explosions galore, and even a snowy forest chase that looks a lot like the one from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. Sometimes they're gripping but generally they're gratuitous demonstrations of "wouldn't it be cool to show bullets going through trees?"

Even if you're going in with a willingness to enjoy big booms, the detecting, while sometimes intriguing, often suggests that Sherlock Holmes studied at the Scooby-Doo Detective School of Happenstance and Lucky Guesses. Sufficed to say, a suspension of disbelief is absolutely required to enjoy A Game of Shadows to its fullest.

To its credit, I had serious concerns that the movie would simply recycle its tricks from the first film (aka showing you, repeatedly, in slow motion exactly what was going to happen in the upcoming sped-up action sequence) ad nauseum. And, while the first fight does use this trick, it's more so to set up the technique's later subversion in two later scenes.

At the end of the day, A Game of Shadows' biggest triumph is in its execution of the Holmes vs. Moriarty feud. Even with imperfect execution, the main thrust of their respectful animosity stems from the inevitability of their confrontation. Holmes is literally incapable of walking away from the challenge of a potentially superior mind. Moriarty, on the other hand, is so malicious and methodical in his ambition that he cannot just walk away. The scenes between Holmes and Moriarty (awesomely executed by Jared Harris) give legitimacy to the severity of their unavoidable collision. It's a potent rivalry that elevates the rest of the movie to an almost recommendable level.

Final verdict: While Robert Downey Jr.'s ability to make a sequel has improved since Iron Man 2, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a movie that seems to be trying to have a bit of something for everyone, leaving bits and pieces of magic to hold onto, rather than a single, cohesive, great film.