Coming Soon to Sawtell Cinema

Sherlock Holmes A Game of Shadows
Rating: M Running Time: 2 hrs 09 mins
Commencing: 9th Feb 2012

Synopsis:

After a series of shocking bombings around Europe, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) is on the scent of a plot that his arch enemy Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) is cooking up. With the help of an anarchist group, Moriarty wants to incite Europe to war – while he is busy buying up weapons manufacturing companies. Meanwhile, Dr Watson (Jude Law) is about to get married and the two friends end up at an underground gentlemen’s club, where Sherlock and his brother, Mycroft Holmes (Stephen Fry) toast Dr. Watson on his last night of bachelorhood – and pick up the trail of Moriarty when meeting Sim (Noomi Rapace), a Gypsy fortune teller, who knows more than she is telling. Their investigation leads Holmes, Watson and Sim across Europe. But Moriarty is always one step ahead as he pursues a plan that, if he succeeds, will change the course of history.

Review by Louise Keller:
Eating hedgehog goulash with gypsies, a bride thrown off a train, Sherlock Holmes disguised as a chair and a naked Stephen Fry are some of the incongruous moments of Guy Ritchie’s sequel which once again has little to do with the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Better than the first film, but bogged down by the fatally inane, clownish comedic tone that sees Robert Downey Jnr dressed as a china man, a wild-eyed tramp, a transvestite, an old man, a curly haired student with buck-teeth and the afore mentioned chair, which incidentally is a stroke of genius, even if it doesn’t belong in this film.

To its credit, the tone of the film’s middle section finds a better comfort zone as a couple of scenarios are played for real and the silly flippant irreverence is momentarily set aside. The scenes when Holmes, Dr Watson (Jude Law) and others including the clairvoyant gypsy (Noomi Rapace, the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) are making their escape from an arms factory in Germany are tense and we feel as though there is something at stake. I didn’t even mind the stylised slo-mo as they run through the forest, as little Hansel (a monster of an automatic weapon) demolishes trees as if blades of grass.

The film’s locations – 19th century Paris (the scenes of the Paris Opera are sensational) and Switzerland (the spectacular wintry alps are breathtaking) certainly add to the elements as the story about the threat to destroy the civilised world. The villain is the mastermind, ruthless Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris) who is taking advantage of the conflict in Europe for his own avaricious, evil intentions.

I am an unequivocal fan of Downey Jnr and always enjoy his work, although Sherlock Holmes (as envisioned by Guy Ritchie) is my least favourite of all his roles. Jude Law is much better this time around as the esteemed, loyal chappie Doctor Watson and Kelly Reilly is great as his new bride. Rapace is eminently watchable in what is essentially a thankless role and Harris (as Moriarty) is easy to loathe as Holmes’ formidable adversary. Stephen Fry is terrific as always, although some may rightly argue far too much is seen of him in one revealing scene.

I hated the first half hour which flaunted its senseless and irritating irreverent tone and Ritchie directed Downey Jnr as though he was revisiting his role in Chaplin. The way in which Holmes’ deductions are visualised in fast motion before the events occur are cleverly conceived and no doubt give the audience the fix of special effects it anticipates. It is the scenes such as the wonderfully angled shot of the Eiffel Tower, Don Giovanni at the Paris Opera House and the ballroom scene at the Swiss Peace Summit, when to the question ‘What do you see?’, Holmes says ‘Everything: that is my curse,’ that offers the film some moments of respite.