Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows (2011) Movie Review

Sherlock Holmes : a game of shadows (2011)        

Rating (4/5)

Cast : Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Kelly Reilly, Jared Harris, Rachel McAdams, Stephen Fry, Naomi Rapace, Eddie Marsan

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Review by Zulfiqar

Holmes fears come true in ‘game of shadows’, when Watson is the groom-to-be and the famous sleuth tries to show his reluctance as much as he can while he bids adieu to his comrade-in-arms. He throws a spurious and spoilt stag party, while his brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry) guffaws with his own set of intellectual jousting. Sherlock takes Watson in a completely physical and mental disarray to the latter’s wedding and look how he gathers an adventurous kick as he ruins the new couple’s honeymoon. But this is all in good spirit and best nature as Downey Jr and Jude Law show their warmth in their characters to imbue the same in the terrific bro-mance chemistry between the literary pair.

It is the easiness with which Guy Ritchie converts this lovable couple into a hilarious,heckling pair of squabblers, who pun and whine, but all the while give the famous characters better life years in the world of celluloid. There is a poignant resuscitative moment when this relationship touches the zenith.

Downey Jr portrays Holmes as a dowdily dressed, grey stubbled, weary looking but sarcastically witty, while ribbing the ‘sickly sweet nanny’ of Mrs Hudson and enjoying the sharp ended and doom resulting jabs of his love interest, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). The movie begins with him coming at cross-purposes with Prof James Moriarty (Jared Harris), his arch nemesis, as the two duel it out to the end, while applying their sharp wits against each other in an international conspiracy. Naomi Rapace plays a Gypsy tarot reader in search of her lost brother, who is probably a significant corner in the global conspiracy of Moriarty. Ritchie doesn’t lose the old british charm of quips when holmes and moriarty come across.

The language is polished but dangerously poised with a lot of oblique warnings. The moment when these literary legends meet are done in a theatrical excellence by the director as he shows the gravitas of the characters more than the visual spectacles of their prowess. And when it comes to the issue of stunts and set-pieces of action, none could overtake Ritchie as he tries to invent new ways of unfolding the fights with a lot of thrilling background score. The sequel extends the geographical barriers as a sequel should while we are given a new view of the late 1890’s Europe especially Paris. Ritchie captures Paris with all the then craze of operas, a lot of interior decoration of Hotels, markets, old ruins, French architecture, and rural countryside of france, as Holmes clumsily rides his small pony over the dells.

The writers pay a lot of subtle homage to Doyle’s characters like Moran, reference to reichenbach falls, Holmes senior’s relationship with his brother and his political stand and many such niceties. The story however doesn’t have Doyle’s nice twist in the end, but then Ritchie’s vision is different. He is more concerned with Holmes and his histrionics with his deducing and using all this to create a magnanimous picture of behemoth conspiracy rather than the luscious denouements. You will live in the characters, enjoy the ride, but don’t expect the ride to be similar to that of the book. You will see our heroes riding one of the earliest cars ever built, feel the party-life of London, see the cosmopolitan streets of the English capital, bidding house and what-not. All of this gives a feel for what life really was when Doyle imagined the stories.

But then again, Ritchie doesn’t turn blind eye to his magnanimous action set pieces. He gives a ringside view of an arsenal factory with primitive but huge ballistics. He slow-mo captures the motion of cannons while they skim the barks of trees and relishes the scene with the fine refinement of new age cinematography.

Jared Harris plays a very good Moriarty, who is narcissistic, brainy and most of all devilishly evil. Paul Anderson makes a brooding, terrific long-shot Moran. Kelly Reilly and Eddie Marsan make the roll-call, but the latter has a rib-tickling one liner on him.

In the mid of the movie, Holmes asks his doctor friend if he would have been happier on his honeymoon rather than with him. Such is the pleasure of ‘game of shadows’. It is the joy of riding with friends in adventures, which we would remember than going through the motions of a life’s cycle.