Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
12/25/11
Most
sequels are simply remakes with the same cast (sometimes even different
ones), but what makes a great movie franchise is characters that can actually
have different adventures and tell stories that don’t simply recreate all
the beats and setpieces of their predecessor. It’s hard to beat the
characters which Guy Ritchie’s 2009 blockbuster Sherlock
Holmes introduced, in part because it wasn’t introducing them at all.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Consulting Detective, his fearless assistant Dr.
John Watson and their large supporting cast of friends and enemies are
among the most enduring and fascinating characters ever created and Robert
Downey Jr. and Jude Law brought those iconic heroes to exciting new life.
The original Holmes knew all too well what kind of sequel to set up and
two years later we have Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
to deliver the one name that quickens the pulse of every Holmes enthusiast:
Moriarty. In truth, the “Napoleon of Crime” was never the principal
character non-readers might assume, getting mentions in only a few of the
stories and never meeting our narrator Watson face-to-face. But the
notion of a criminal genius the equal of Sherlock Holmes, one whose menace
would require the master detective to take unprecedented steps (detailed
in the story “The Final Problem”) to defeat… well, we all love a good Supervillain.
Shadows delivers him in the form of veteran character actor Jared
Harris, who’s splendidly smug and convincingly dangerous opposite our returning
heroes who are once again on their game. With the addition of a few
new supporting characters and the continuing fascination of a triangle
between Holmes, Watson and the latter’s fiancé Mary earlier incarnations
of the stories have never so skillfully explored, A Game of Shadows
is a great new chapter in the adventures of Ritchie’s Holmes.
Dr.
John Watson (Jude Law) writes his recollections of a particular adventure
he shared with his friend Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.). In
the early days of the 20th Century, Europe stood on the brink of war as
France and Germany were rocked by terrorist bombings they blamed on one
another. Holmes stops his old love and nemesis Irene Adler (Rachel
McAdams) from setting off just such a bomb on the orders of Professor James
Moriarty (Jared Harris), who’s been pulling her strings since before the
Affair of Lord Blackwood. Having failed in her mission, she’s casually
dispatched by the Professor, who turns his attention to solving the Holmes
problem. The Master Detective has become quite obsessed with the
threat he poses since Watson moved out of their Baker Street apartment
to prepare for his wedding to Mary (Kelly Reilly), and once that joyous
event has occurred, Moriarty decides to strike Holmes at his heart by killing
his best friend. Now the game is truly afoot, with Mary sent to the
home of Sherlock’s diplomat brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry) for her safety
while Holmes and Watson go once more into the breach to stop a conspiracy
that somehow involves the missing brother of Gypsy named Simza Heron
(Noomi Rapace). A great East Wind is coming… and unless Sherlock
Holmes can defeat the plans of the one man who matches his deductive genius,
all of Europe will be engulfed in war.
Robert
Downey Jr. has taken Sherlock Holmes in a few directions to which we’re
not accustomed, more manic and even less socialized than Doyle’s version,
but the changes grow from an understanding of the heart of the character
none who preceded him in the role has so clearly grasped: Holmes
suffers from severe depression and addiction issues, but he’s also a genius
of the highest order. Mix those things together with a taste for
adventure and challenge and you end up with a guy who’s the ultimate modern
action hero, with a brain the size of the Internet and problems so deep
he can barely function without the aid of his best friend. The sample
size is small, but Downey is shaping up as an all-time great movie star
specifically because he can invest courageous leading men with the depth,
flaws and fun we associate with supporting characters. Law is perfectly
cast as his friend and partner and Shadows gives him more and meatier
stuff to do. I like that there was no Holmes Begins to this
franchise and that it begins with a lot of history between the leads.
A Game of Shadows plays on our understanding that these guys have
been through a lot that we haven’t seen and that their bond runs a lot
deeper than what two adventures might forge. Fans of the Holmes/Watson
Bromance will be in heaven in the third act, when the level of danger encourages
the characters to drop all pretense of bickering and have each other’s
backs like never before.
But
there is a lot of that bickering early on because as Shadows begins,
there’s a very large issue between them, and its name is Mary. Doyle
happily married Watson off at the end of the first Holmes novel,
"A Study in Scarlet", because it was supposed to be a one-off adventure.
He never fully made peace with how to divide Watson’s time between his
wife and his jealous friend, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch the Holmes
creative team (Michele & Kieran Mulroney handle the writing chores
this time around) swish this very modern triangle around. Reilly
hits just the right notes in the role: you can feel her frustration
and admiration in equal measure for Holmes, and her relationship with Watson
feels genuine. There’s a fairly obvious homoerotic subtext to Holmes’
refusal to let Watson go, and the movie allows that to breathe pretty aggressively
while not disregarding the fact that every great friendship is like a love
affair. Some fun is also had by expanding the Holmes universe to
include his brother Mycroft, embodied here with wry jolliness by Fry.
And
then there’s Harris as the diabolical Moriarty. He’s both Holmes
equal and his opposite, with a total lack of empathy for his fellow man
that makes it easy to use his genius to dream up ways to exchange millions
of lives for money. There’s always been something “off” about Harris’
screen presence that makes him ideal for characters who don’t fit in.
Here he uses that aloofness to project not just the homicidal genius of
Moriarty but his ruthless contempt for anything that does not perform exactly
as he predicts. Yes, Holmes is a worthy adversary, but he just HATES
that. To be inconvenienced to have to match wits… well, anyone responsible
for that will have to suffer. It all comes to a head at a peace conference
at a Swiss hotel atop a waterfall…
The
climax is beyond grand: the one thing that might slot A Game of
Shadows a notch below its predecessor is that the action in the middle
third is a tad perfunctory, albeit copious. But once all parties
have converged for the big finish, there’s not just the buzz of watching
the actors play out the movie’s clever riff on "The Final Problem", but
a climactic fight between Holmes and Moriarty that’s as imaginative and
creative as any clash ever captured on film. While there’s not quite
as much quoting of assorted Doyle stuff this time as in the original Holmes,
the movie engages that Final Problem so successfully both as a climax and
a cliffhanger that I can’t wait to see their take on "The Adventure of
the Empty House".
Non-fans
should still get a lot of fun and action out of Sherlock Holmes:
A Game of Shadows, but it’s best enjoyed by people who feel these characters
in their bones (or the lead actors accordingly, who are all at the top
of their game). Holmes isn’t a superhero, he doesn’t come from a
comic book, but this franchise is one of the most successful in the modern
trend of movies designed so fans can geek out on their favorite properties,
even ones that come from a time before radio. May the adventures
of Holmes and Dr. Watson continue as long as they can come up with new
plots, which should be just about forever. |
