Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
3 out of 5
Dir. Guy Ritchie
Robert Downey Junior returns this month as Howard Stark’s lesser groomed twin Sherlock Holmes in Director Guy Ritchie’s first ever sequel. Downey once again joins the good Dr Jude Law to play a Game of Shadows in an adventure that sees Holmes pitted against the Napoleon of crime Professor Moriarty. Amid a humid late nineteenth century European climate of political terrorism Sherlock and Watson go on a stag do in Victorian Spearmint Rhino. After getting both royally shitfaced and attacked by Cossack assassins the sozzled sleuths embark on an investigation across Europe that will lead them into a scheme that threatens to shatter the Western World.
The previous Sherlock, stock and two smoking barrels was a crisp and atmospheric show which flirted with steam-punk and never quite let its Guy Ritchie style get ahead of the Victorian England substance. True to previous form, Game of Shadows rides along on its brilliant set pieces. Ritchie fashions a great scene involving a train, a Gatling gun, some cross dressing and a questionable Heath Ledger Joker homage. This all follows on from a fight, with the by-now-familiar premonitory slow motion, that incorporates impromptu singing and projectile kidney beans. You get the idea that Guy Ritchie’s fight choreography meetings must have been the best things ever. There is always a feeling of spontaneity and the threat of the unexpected; as a result the cataclysmic duel between Holmes and Moriarty is a fight like no other.
Banter between Holmes and Watson is ever present and fully engrossing, characterising through dialogue has always been Ritchie’s strong suit. The character dynamic between the two is at once completely ridiculous and entirely relatable, a surface conflict between the responsible and the rash is underlined by a bitterly shared fondness. This balance is the envy of buddy movies and credibly turns the traditional one-sided-ness of the Holmes and Watson team into a much improved screen presence.
The concept, however, is too expansive. The previous film balanced on a precarious period piece premise, but it did so acrobatically, Ritchie characterised Victorian London so well that we were convinced. The same detail exists in Game of Shadows’ London, it’s when the film goes abroad that the attention to detail simply falls apart. The French drink red wine and talk about the revolution, the Germans are militaristic, and Gypsies are dishonest (somewhat of a reoccurring Richie theme). This globetrotting feels forced and leads the movie so fast and over so little substance that it makes any investment in the story impossible.
There are abundant richly styled battle scenes but these get in the way of any actual detecting, meaning that the whole thing becomes a chase through Europe in which the pursuer and the pursued switch places as if in a Benny Hill sketch. The viewers’ interest is now sought through explosions and death threats, rather than mystery, which is pretty shallow since we know that if Sherlock and Watson are getting attacked by anything in the middle of the film then they will clearly not die. We also know that Moriarty’s threat really isn’t a threat at all, it’s simply too big and ridiculous and downright anti-everything I learned in GCSE history.
And while Jared Harris as Moriarty is clearly a triumph in casting, he’s all friendly malevolence and creepy beard, his battle of wits with Holmes isn’t allowed to properly develop. The plot is so wide that the two are rarely given a chance to duel. Sherlock just endlessly wades through diplomats, soldiers and Moriarty’s colourless sidekicks, these characters keep telling us how cunning the villain is without the film deeming to show it. It’s also difficult to understand how anything Holmes is doing can disrupt Moriarty’s apparently continent spanning evil organisation.
To round it all off Noomi Rapache gets such a raw deal that you want to slap her agent. She spends her the screen time as someone bafflingly named Sizma Heron; either sitting in silence, running away, or getting her hair pulled by Cossacks. The film leaves her crying desperately, her own story unresolved. There is none of the feistiness, genius or depth seen with Rachel McAdams in the first film, only the fact that she is a gypsy and is therefore a useful plot device for the blindingly quick transport around Europe.
A Game of Shadows is a bunch of brilliant witticisms and dynamic fight scenes begging desperately to be compressed into some comprehendible plot that doesn’t run to another country every five minutes. For no good reason it was decided that the audience wanted a change of formula from the last time around; that bigger meant better. Guy Ritchie, the most acclaimed director of micro- tomfoolery, is made to go epic. If there was anything that Arthur Conan-Doyle could have taught the makers then it would have been that if the public like what you’re doing, don’t change the game.
