Review of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) by Jacob M — 28 Sep 2013

Well, when Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law became Sherlock Holmes and Watson in 2009, the update of Sherlock Holmes was a massive hit, though some attacked Guy Ritchie's modern directing action style and turning Holmes into an action hero. While the film wasn't perfect, I found the film to be fun and filled with fun action and humor. The sequel, A Game of Shadows, kind of takes the franchise backwards here.

In the sequel, Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) is continuing his fight for justice as the detective with a brain, but finds himself in a jam when he finds his smartness threatened by criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), who repeatedly outsmarts Holmes with his wits, causes massive bombings, which causes threats to world peace, and plots world domination. With the help of Watson (Jude Law) and a mysterious gypsy (Noomi Rapace), Holmes has to play his biggest game in order to solve this case.

Also returning for this sequel includes Rachel McAdams as the mysterious Irene Alder, Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade, and Kelly Reilly as Watson's wife Mary.

The film also stars Stephen Fry as Holmes' political brother Mycroft.

The first Holmes was a fun action ride. A Game of Shadows on the other hand, is a little disappointing. In the first Holmes, I was impressed with Ritchie's directing style, but here, I think he really overdid it. While there were some fun action scenes throughout, such as an insane sequence on a train, the film was really over-the top. For instance, a sequence involving the main characters running through the woods while being shot at by cannons, which would have been an epic scene, turned into something completely stupid by filming the scene entirely in slow-mo. This is slow-mo at it's all time low; the action did not put me in suspense, and the scene felt like a waste of time to me. Even more disappointing is the climax at a peace conference. While the characters, Holmes and Moriarty, were interesting characters, this climatic battle was really anticlimactic and very disappointing.

The good news is, Robert Downey Jr. was still excellent as Holmes. Despite the campy material, I enjoyed Downey's wits and his approach to getting out of trouble. One sequence that cracked me up involved Holmes riding a pony. Jude Law is still enjoyable as Watson, and I liked Kelly Reilly as the wife. While I was annoyed by Rachel McAdams in the first film, I was starting to enjoy her more in this one, but her character gets killed off after her opening scene, which made me mad cause I was starting to finally get used to her character. At least the new female lead, Noomi Rapace, was excellent as the gypsy. The performance that really annoyed me was Stephen Fry as Holmes' brother. His personality was very annoying and when he tried to be funny, such as a scene when he's walking around his house naked, it becomes forced and extremely stupid. But the villain, played by Jared Harris, is at least a small improvement over the Blackwood character in the first Holmes. I thought Harris pulled Moriarty's clever wits well, but like Blackwood, his plot for world control is still very cheesy. So that didn't clearly help either.

Hans Zimmer returns to do the score, and like his amazing score in the first Holmes, Zimmer's score is excellent, despite the cheesy and over the top material. Zimmer's instrumentation and intense dramatic material is excellent.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a mixed bag. While Downey, Law, and Rapace excel in entertaining the audience, the film suffers from a cheesier tome, the villain plot remains really stupid, and Ritchie's directing style become more annoying and campy than unique in it's predecessor. But I still liked it, which is why I still gave it a fresh rating, but at 60%, it's pretty borderline to being truly rotten. I suggest you watch the first instead, or if you're me and you've never seen the older films, attempt to seek the Rathbone/Cushing/Lee Holmes films.