Roger Ebert Reviews Sherlock Holmes a Game of Shawdos
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Matrimony, Watson? Whyever for?
I suppose any hope of an accurate Sherlock Holmes pic is foolish at this epoch in flick history. No affair that a story is ready 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 menstruum. As an Anglophile, I've luxuriated in the genial temper of the Conan Doyle stories, where a footstep is heard on the stair, a client tells his tale, and Holmes withdraws to his rooms to consider his new case during a menses of meditation (involving such study aids as opium).
We meet a great bargain of Victorian London (and Paris and Switzerland) in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," but we must await quickly. The movie all merely hurtles through episodes that would be leisurely set pieces in a traditional Holmes story. This is a modern activeness picture played in costume. I knew it would exist. After Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" (2009) 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, all the same, is add a degree of refinement and invention, and I enjoyed this one more than than the earlier film.
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" opens with an emergency that threatens to rock Holmes' earth: Dr. Watson (Law) is getting married. In the first film, nosotros learned of his engagement to Mary Watson (Kelly Reilly), and at present a date has been fix for the poor girl. Holmes (Downey), who considers himself every bit as much expert company every bit the doctor could possibly require, deplores this development, and indeed fifty-fifty joins the beatific couple on their honeymoon train journey. At ane point, he throws Mary off the train, but to exist fair, it'south to save her life.
Most of the film centers on a climax in the long-continuing feud between Holmes and Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), who below his cover equally an Oxford don, is the mastermind of an anarchist plot to utilize bombings and assassinations to button Europe into state of war. Moriarty would profit handsomely from that because he operates an enormous hole-and-corner munitions manufacturing plant, turning out everything from automobile pistols to gigantic cannons. The lives of many European heads of state are threatened, and Holmes is the just hope to keep the peace.
Once this game is afoot, information technology seems too large to be contained by the eccentric investigator of 221B Baker Street and Watson, his intimate. (I am using "intimate" as both a noun and an insinuation.) It'southward more of a case for James Bond, and Moriarty'south grandiosity seems on a scale with a Bail villain. Guy Ritchie and his writers Michele and Kieran Mulroney, all the same, wisely devote some of their best scenes to one-on-ones between Holmes and Moriarty.
Their struggle comes to a head in an elegant, loftier-stakes chess game, held for some reason in Switzerland in the dead of a wintertime night on a snowy outdoor balustrade. As played by Jared Harris, Moriarty doesn't gnash or fulminate, but fences with Holmes in spinous linguistic communication. This returns the story somewhat to the Conan Doyle tradition that Holmes did virtually of his best work in his heed.
Dr. Watson has a more proactive part this fourth dimension. "A Game of Shadows" opens with him recalling these events on a typewriter that is besides mod for 1895 only maybe suggests he's writing years later. He's not just a confidante and chronicler but a hero, likewise, involved in fights and shootouts. His wife must exist thankful that Holmes abruptly eliminated her from almost of the action.
Mycroft, Holmes' blood brother, turns out to exist well-placed at the eye of European diplomacy; Stephen Fry has plummy skillful fun in the role, specially in nude moments where he shields his netherlands from view by employing artfully arranged foregrounds in the "Austin Powers" tradition. Two women characters are prominent. Back again is Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), the enigmatic figure in much romantic speculation well-nigh Holmes. And we meet for the beginning fourth dimension a gypsy fortune teller named Madame Simza Heron, played by Noomi Rapace, the original "Daughter With the Dragon Tattoo." She capably discharges the duties required of her as Madam Heron, just demonstrates how really brilliantly conceived the Dragon Lady was. Heron is pale by comparison.
It's Downey'due south pic. With his cool, flippant way, his Holmes stands apart from the danger, thinking it through visually earlier performing it, remaining insouciant in the face of calamity. He appears in many disguises, ane with a markedly bad wig, another as a remarkably convincing chair. The matter to do, I suppose, is to set bated your memories of the Conan Doyle stories, save them to relish on a night this wintertime and bask this moving-picture show as a high-caliber entertainment.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Dominicus-Times from 1967 until his expiry in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
129 minutes
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