Downey Charms Inside Surprisingly Simple Plot

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2011)

I couldn't wait for the weekend to begin because I knew I was going to hit up a popcorn, blockbuster double-header in the theater, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, a back- to-back pairing almost unmatched this year. Two incredibly big budget franchises with two incredibly charismatic leading men. These are the box office battles I just live for. Since the weekend numbers have already come in, we've seen Sherlock Holmes dominate the weekend ($40 million vs. $13 million for Mission Impossible), so the honor of first review goes to them.
Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows picks up fairly close to where the last one left off. Watson is getting married and Holmes is closing in on his arch-enemy, Professor Moriarty. The two masterminds face off against each other in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse which threatens not only the life of our quixotic hero, but his best friend and possibly the entire world beyond.
It's likely been said before, and as much as I hate repetition I'll forego it this one time, Robert Downey Jr. was born for this role. Obviously the historical version of Holmes was tweaked and crafted around Downey's skills and persona, but the magical merge between the real person and the literary classic created something perfect which will be cherished by viewers for generations to come. All future attempts at playing Holmes, which I am sure there will be someday, will be weighed against Downey, a bar now set incredibly high. His charm, wit and energy flow through the scenes effortlessly, keeping the audience in tow no matter what is going on. He also lets his co-stars, like Jude Law (as Dr. Watson) and Jared Harris (as Prof. Moriarty) own the moment equally, not overshadowing their own crisp deliveries and subtle mannerisms. From back-to-front, the performances throughout were playful, charming and more than enough to please any afternoon crowd.
So if everyone was so great in it, why is the rating so low? That is a fantastic question.
The downfall here is the script. If you are going to create a story for the world's most renowned investigator, you need to plunge the imagination of the audience into a world of multiple story lines, interconnecting webs of deceit and subterfuge, something only Holmes could solve. The first film had this, but Game of Shadows rolls out a plot all too plain for such a complicated enemy like Moriarty. There seemed to be an effort to cover that up by actually showing a room full of interconnecting threads built by Holmes, to demonstrate how complicated this all really was, but that felt a cheap way out for writing a more complex story. Moriarty is the epitome of villains, the mental match for Sherlock Holmes, and in the end he just turns out to be greedy, a motive far below the weight of his character.
Guy Ritchie, the returning director, held up his side of the bargain, but didn't push anything forward in terms of the style and execution. We got more slam-to-slow-motion shots and a couple good moments of Holmes playing out the oncoming violence in his head in order to predict the exact counter maneuvers. I will give both Ritchie and the screenwriters credit through for the final scene between Holmes and Moriarty, which I won't go into detail about, but it was a nice twist on a familiar theme in this franchise.