If you saw the first Sherlock and liked it you will enjoy what the creative team led, by Guy Ritchie, have done with this one. It’s louder, faster with a much greater scope. The action in A Game of Shadows traverses Europe and ends at the spectacular Reichenbach Falls, where Holmes confront his most worthy adversary, Professor Moriarty. It’s light hearted in tone, with an over the top plot, and flourishes of simple humour that keep it easy to watch. The smoldering relationship between the actors Law and Downer Jnr continues to burn. A Sherlock in drag is an obvious device, but one that works to fuel the fans own homo-erotic desires. The inclusion of Noomi Rapace as a Gypsy fortune teller, Stephen Fry as Sherlock’s gay older sibling and Jared Harris as the nemesis serve their respective characters well enough but are made to stay in the background to Ritchie’s vision of a Sherlock driven by technical wizardry, elaborate schizophrenic fighting sequences and lots of loud explosions. In short it’s a holiday blockbuster with all the trimmings.
I must confess though I’m not a fan. Franchise movies aren’t my thing. This film is a public school boy pissing contest with performance enhancing drugs. A loveless marriage of history and histrionics motivated by profit and the sequel(s) a loyalty reward scheme – at best. I haven’t read Doyle, so I can’t say whether Ritchie has done the man proud, but whatever the case I am sure this film will do financially what it set out to do. I mean, if anyone deserves credit it’s the producers who orchestrated the deal. Bringing Guy Ritchie at a time when he was at his lowest was genius. The risk has paid off. The principal actors are on many womens ‘to-do’ list and what better way to unleash their potency than in the thinking mans hero roles. Educated Victorian men never looked more appealing than in Downey Jnr and Law. They tapped into this newly minted ‘Bromance’ phenomenon that Hollywood has been selling and found poster boys willing to go the long haul.
But let’s be honest Downey Jr’s self-centred Holmes to Law’s Everyman’s Watson are not new. They certainly didn’t invent this scenario or dynamic. This relationship type has been here for a long time, on screen at least. Doyle may have laid a blueprint for it, to which the creative team have exploited mercilessly. The best and most enduring relationship of this type in recent memory has to be Hugh Laurie’s Doctor House to Robert Sean Leonard’s Dr Wilson in the popular TV series, House. He (Laurie) solves extremely difficult mysteries, operates with a great deal of impunity, breaks up relationships, including his own, takes lots of drugs, uses women for sex. And that’s another thing. Are we back to some puritanical times when Hollywood has gone off sex. Is this the influence of the Right I see here? What is it with this franchise that we can have a bare-chested man beating another man senseless but we can’t have the smartest man in the room get it on. Surely Sherlock could be filling more than just his pipe. But I digress.
Divide and rule was the major theme in the first movie of the franchise. Create neatly defined divisions, whip up the fear and confusion amongst the masses, offer us a false hope and then have it collapse. The second installment is more of the same. This time it’s personified by Moriarty, A Freudian intellectual of the worst kind who taps into man’s greed and sells it as fear. To which Holmes is impressed by his methods. Ritchie, would like to have his Holmes represent an amoral man. Free of politics, but in this film, it becomes obvious that Holmes like Moriarty sees the worst in humanity. It’s one thing to solve the puzzle, the other is to realise it serves no purpose in the end.
The paradox of it all, is that without the conflict, with men at their worst, Holmes and Watson for that matter cannot exist as they are. When Holmes fights, by that I mean when he solves these mysteries, he really fights only worthy opponents. Otherwise he learns nothing. He is not interested in anything else. The story is not interesting. He needs, we need conflict. We need war. I hope it doesn’t give too much away.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is released in cinemas 16th December 2011.
Director: Guy Ritchie
Stars:Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Jared Harris
Runtime: 129 min
Country: USA
Film Rating: 
