Film Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Director Guy Ritchie’s second Sherlock Holmes delivers some more of what viewers loved about the 2009 film.  The audience is dazzled by gorgeous, panoptic scenes:  the French countryside, the snow-capped Swiss Alps, and once again, Victorian London, recreated in lovely hues of gray and blue.  Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law have still got it, as Downey’s Holmes still carries off the bang-up disguise, and Law continues to wow as the sexiest Watson in history.  When given the chance, the duo can still deliver a laugh like before.

This time around, Watson’s lush antics provide a foil for Holmes’ steadfast obsession with catching his nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris).  Watson’s drunken gambling on the night of his stag party provides some rollicking comedy, and his riotous dance among spirited gypsies is sure to be recreated at many a holiday-season frat party.  But Downey gets his own laughs in, especially during some funny bits involving Holmes and a horse.  Fans will go see this version of Sherlock Holmes for many of the same reasons they did in 2009:  because Downey and Law are such unique, vibrant picks for these roles and because they have great chemistry together.

Unfortunately, many fans will discover that we don’t get to see as much of that chemistry here as we did the last time around.  Holmes and Watson aren’t onscreen together quite as much as before, and the film skimps on that witty banter that was the highlight of their last adventure.  When we do see Holmes and Watson in that playful mode, in a downright frisky scene on a train, it’s an odd cross between humor and camp.  This is really as bromantic as audiences will have ever seen Holmes and Watson, as the film goes overboard in pointing out the already quite obvious homosocial bent of this detective team.  In an over-the-top rejection of the subtlety that made us all giggle through the first film, Guy Ritchie wants to make absolutely certain that we get it:  Watson’s getting married and Holmes feels like a jilted lover.  Done with a lighter hand this could have worked, but it’s so heavy-handed that throughout the film, Holmes comes across as, frankly, a little needy:

Instead of the Downey-Law show that made the first film so successful, most of the movie is taken up by explosions of one kind or another.  We get fight scene after fight scene, but it’s almost an hour in before we get any discernible plot.  Moriarty is trying to do something bad.  We’re not quite sure what, and we won’t learn what until almost the end of the film.  Meanwhile we wait patiently, having no idea what Moriarty’s goal is.  When we finally get an answer, it’s an intriguing turn, and one relevant to today’s political climate.  But we don’t have time to think about that, because we’re off to the next explosion, almost as if Ritchie himself wanted more attention, so insistent is he upon inserting himself between Downey and Law and saying, “Yes, they’re awesome, funny actors who could have carried this film if given a plot to work with, but look at me!  I can blow stuff up!”

And maybe even that would have been fine if Ritchie were blowing stuff up in some new and interesting manner.  Much has been made of turning Sherlock Holmes into an action figure, but fewer people would be playing the Sherlock-Holmes-snob if only Ritchie would give us some kind of action we haven’t seen a thousand times before. The slow-motion fight scenes from the first film were slick, but here they’re just one more thing the audience has already seen.  Explosions, ditto.  Big guns bringing buildings to the ground from which our fine hero emerges from the rubble, ditto.  Poisoned darts and the like, you get the picture.  The only time we get something surprising and new and genuinely, utterly fun is in the very last scene of the film.  But the hilarity there just calls attention to how lively the first two hours of the film could have been.

It’s commonly assumed that the Basil Rathbone movies would be too slow for today’s audiences.  But couldn’t we find, some way, somehow, some compromise between the slow, cerebral unfolding of a well-crafted plot using close attention to detail and careful deduction, and a shoot-em-up, blow-em-up, punch-em-a-lot action blah-fest?

All this having been said, no mistake in this film is more glaring than its (mis)use of Noomi Rapace.  Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler in the last film was so bland next to Law and Downey that at first audiences will be glad to see Rapace step in.  But this great actress serves as a simple sounding-board for Holmes and Watson.  Yes, she kicks a little ass, but mostly she just sits and stares.

Casting her in a bit part in a movie that is much less spine-tingling than the international hit we’ve just seen her in is sheer folly.  Because as she stares up at Holmes and Watson with her big gorgeous eyes, audiences are bound to be reminded of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – and the fact that they are not, as they had been through the Swedish thriller, sitting on the edge of their seats with their mouths wide open, kind of drooling a little bit and whispering “oh my God” a lot.  It all makes one think about the detective genre on a larger scale, and how Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are the true modern-day descendants of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s winding yarns of diabolical crime and cool observation mixed with the occasional horse-and-buggy chase.  It’s kind of like putting Harrison Ford in a movie about cowboys and aliens.  Even if the cowboys and aliens are alright, Harrison Ford’s face just serves as a constant reminder of the times when it was all done so, so much better.

Final Verdict:   Muddling Downey and Law’s chemistry in favor of drawing attention to himself, Guy Ritchie brings us a Sherlock Holmes comprised of a bunch of things blowing up, interspersed with Robert Downey Jr. in a few nifty costumes, some sweeping cinematography, a few slow-motion rows and some close-ups on objects that won’t make any sense for two full hours.