That said, Sherlock Holmes; A Game of Shadows, is an enjoyable, well crafted piece of work and I never found myself looking at my watch at any time during the film. The story - while admittedly far fetched - is thoroughly fleshed out and Ritchie has a solid command of how to execute action sequences; which is a good thing since the film is virtually one big action sequence. Story-wise the film has the air of a James Bond film with a bearded megalomaniac puppetmaster ala Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) from "Moonraker" manipulating the high and mighty for his own gain and, of course, end of the world as we know it stakes. That the story is too big for it's own Victorian britches could have been an issue but because the world in which events unfold is never really in the foreground we're not too terribly conscious of the disconnect.
The Hugo Dax character is of course Dr James Moriarty, Holmes' legendary nemesis who occupied only the fringes of the previous film. Here he's front and center, played with gusto by Jared Harris. His world-altering plan is to set the European heads of state against one another in order to create a world war in which he will supply the weapons. He's well aware that only the mercurial genius Sherlock Holmes stands in his way and the film chronicles his attempts to remove Holmes from the game so that his plan can play out unabated. Just why he'd wait to do this until the plan was already in motion is the one weak point of the screenplay. But if you can get by that you should have no problems with the rest of the story.
Ritchie plays up the bromance between Holmes and Watson to absurd heights and then undermines it all with the one scene in the film that flirts with genuine emotion. Holmes and Watson, on their way to Paris, are on the ferry to Calais when Watson finds the bloody handkerchief of Holmes' would be paramour, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams reprising her role). While Watson is unaware of the details he surmises correctly that something terrible must have happened to her. Holmes takes the kerchief from him without saying a word and moves away sniffing it while Watson surveys his partner quietly taking his measure (as we are meant to). He realizes, maybe for the first time, that beneath the Peter Pan exterior lies a human being as susceptible as any of us to the devastation caused by the loss of a loved one. This crucial scene takes about a minute to unfold yet redefines the relationship between the two men (and by extension the entire film) going forward. Without it Game of Shadows would be an entirely different film.
Jude Law seems much more confident this time around. In the first film he seemed a bit lost to me as if he was trying to figure out just how he could occupy a character like Watson without being lost in Holmes' (and Downey's) shadow. Here he seems much more at ease with Watson perhaps because his character is given a more central role. Indeed the entire story plays out as a eulogy of sorts Watson is writing about his friend at some unspecified future date.
Downey himself remains as flippant as ever. His performances always have a Jack Nicholson-esque air about them where it's often hard to tell if he's acting or just being himself. When he slides into his patented deer-in-the-headlights mode you don't see his character thinking things out, you see Downey mulling over how he's going to play it.
As mentioned before the rest of the cast is solid with Stephen Fry having a jolly old time playing Holmes' brother and Noomi Rapace doing a perfectly suitable job as a gypsy whose brother has gotten himself unwittingly ensnared by Moriarty and is forced to do his new master's bidding.
All in all Sherlock Holmes; A Game of Shadows is a fun 2 hours at the movies. It moves along briskly, is reasonably intelligent, sports fine performances and is a step up from the first film.
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