Victorian action heroes do it more... interestingly

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2012)

This isn't a review. It's a handful of thoughts.
LITERARY HOLMES
Ritchie, Mulroney and Mulroney have conceived of a fitting tribute to the literary Holmes.
Some accuse Downey Jr. of playing the fool in these pictures, of not bowing down to that dusty archetype we learned by watching Jeremy Brett et al.
But Downey Jr.'s comedy makes his gravity more gripping.
Literary Holmes IS funny. He DOES make use of unseemly disguises. He ACTS like a manic-depressive, not like the highly-functioning sociopath of the current BBC series.
And when he addresses Moriarty, we see the joker's mask drop to reveal the dignity of someone who would design his own destruction to ensure that of an evil adversary.
ARCHETYPES OF HOLMES
Action heroes reflect archetypes, and this Holmes brings home a bundle of them.
--- Natural man, who drinks, eats and smokes with gusto.
--- Action man, who excels at boxing, baritsu and single-stick.
--- Intellectual man, who 'sees everything.'
--- And spiritual man, who risks his life to save his friends and the world.
ALWAYS GOOD TO SEE YOU, WATSON
The bond between Watson and Holmes is cinematic glue. Good-natured bickering is fun to witness on screen and people who don't perceive 'chemistry' between the actors are missing what's there.
OVERDONE EFFECTS? IMPOSSIBLE!
(Mission Impossible, that is.) Sherlock Holmes gives us action mixed with effects. It also gives us thought mixed with effects. Moments--within moments--are telescoped through time to give us a giddy sense of omniscience.
Action sequences using effects are burnished blue, the sound comes in booming details, and each one contains a moment or two of humour.
("Little Hansel" is a lot funnier than "Big Bertha," its real-life model, probably. Holmes whipping off his dress to reveal the dangling set of a grenade device is funny. The skip-and-whistle of Moriarty's four thugs gives us a laugh, a breath, in the first fight sequence.)
Game of Shadows offers action in discrete doses, each moment is produced for clarity.
Contrast these sequences to those in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
A sandstorm. Hm. A car chase in a sandstorm. That's new. But so what? Rappelling off a sky-scraper. Um. How long is this going to go on? I'd sleep if it wasn't so loud.
VICTORIAN ENGLAND: TRAINS AND TELEGRAMS, STEAMSHIPS AND CIGARS
Whoops! Some of the technology used in the film was still a few years off in 1891. Oh well.
Forgivable.
But it hints to the only problem with A Game of Shadows: The film gets slightly ahead of itself and might inspire the 3rd installment to balloon into something of a cartoon, just to 'top' #2.
The scope, from London to Paris to Germany to Switzerland, was a treat.
The stakes, personal and societal, were high.
The amount of machine-gun-play was considerable.
How on Earth will the writer top that without toppling what's been built up?
DEEPLY SATISFYING
Did I mention I saw this film five times? :-)