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I suppose any hope of an authentic Sherlock Holmes movie is foolish at this epoch in movie history. No matter that a story is set in 1895 in Victorian London, it must be chockablock with explosions, gunfire, special effects and fights that bear no comparison to the “fisticuffs” of the period. As an Anglophile, I’ve luxuriated in the genial atmosphere of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, where a step is heard on the stair, a client tells his tale, and (Dr. Watson reports) Holmes withdraws to his rooms to consider his new case during a period of meditation (involving such study aids as opium).
We see a great deal of Victorian London (and Paris and Switzerland) in “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” but we must look quickly. The movie all but hurtles through episodes that would be leisurely set pieces in a traditional Holmes story. This is a modern action picture played in costume. I knew it would be. After Guy Ritchie’s 2009 “Sherlock Holmes” with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law grossed something like half a billion dollars, this was no time to rethink the approach. What they have done, however, is add a degree of refinement and invention, and I enjoyed this one more than the earlier film.
“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” opens with an emergency that threatens to rock Holmes’ world: Watson (Law) is getting married. In the first film we learned of his engagement to Mary Watson (Kelly Reilly), and now a date has been set for the poor girl. Holmes (Downey), who considers himself every bit as much good company as the doctor could possibly require, deplores this development, and indeed even joins the blissful couple on their honeymoon train journey. At one point he throws Mary off the train, but to be fair it’s to save her life.
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‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’ RATED: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, and drug material) WHEN: Opens today WHERE: Century 14 Downtown, Century Rio 24, Cottonwood, Four Hills, High Ridge, Winrock, Premiere (Rio Rancho), Starlight (Los Lunas) |
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Most of the film centers on a climax in the long-standing feud between Holmes and professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), who beneath his cover as an Oxford don is the mastermind of an anarchist plot to use bombings and assassinations to push Europe into war. Moriarty would profit handsomely from that because he operates an enormous secret munitions factory, turning out everything from machine pistols to gigantic cannons. The lives of many European heads of state are threatened, and Holmes is the only hope to keep the peace.
Once this game is afoot, it seems too large to be contained by the eccentric investigator of 221B Baker St. and Watson his intimate (I am using “intimate” as both a noun and an insinuation). It’s more of a case for James Bond, and Moriarty’s grandiosity seems on a scale with a Bond villain. Guy Ritchie and his writers, Michele Mulroney and Kieran Mulroney, however, wisely devote some of their best scenes to one-on-ones between Holmes and Moriarty.
Their struggle comes to a head in an elegant high-stakes chess game, held for some reason in Switzerland in the dead of a winter night on a snowy outdoor balcony. Moriarty is played by Jared Harris, who doesn’t gnash or fulminate, but fences with Holmes in barbed language. This returns the story somewhat to the tradition that Holmes did most of his best work in his mind.
Watson has a more proactive role this time than previously. The movie opens with him recalling these events on a typewriter that is too modern for 1895 but maybe suggests he’s writing years later. He’s not just confidant and chronicler but a hero too, involved in fights and shoot-outs. His wife must be thankful that Holmes abruptly eliminated her from most of the action.
