"He played the game for the game's own sake"

Rating: 9/10 (9 May 2012)

'He played the game for the game's own sake' would be a perfect description of Robert Downey Jr's take on Sherlock Holmes. He's matter of factly slick, inadvertently cool and cheekily eccentric not to mention a king of one liners. He returns to deliver superbly in this sequel to Guy Ritchie's 'Sherlock Holmes' in an enthralling cat and mouse game between prodigies involving a clash between him and Sherlock Holmes' classical, scheming nemesis, Professor James Moriarty played by Jared Harris.
Ritchie has directed a complementary film where everything and everyone seems to complement everything and everyone else whether the acting, dialogue, score or the sets. The plot is well crafted if not masterful but undoubtedly vastly entertaining. The usage of flashback storytelling, as seen in the prequel to this film, gives many enigmas in the movie a sense of finality; you can't help but be in awe of the manner of storytelling presented to you not to mention the filming style through which the narrative is presented. Don't be put off by the slow, almost uneventful start, it is certainly made worth your while very quickly. Occasionally, it can be hard to keep up, such is the pace with which events transpire, it does lose you at junctures but fear not, only temporarily.
This light hearted iteration of a mystery thriller is absorbing and compelling, much like its predecessor and we have to attribute it to the director and the acting talent in the film that the light hearted tone hasn't become slapstick as much as a new spin on the mystery and intrigue associated with Arthur Conan Doyle's classic Sherlock Holmes.
Robert Downey Jr. may yet again have been the star of the show but it's the chemistry between his Sherlock and Jude Law's Watson that really shines. Their dialogue interchanged is so fluid and natural not to mention damned entertaining.
Everyone's holding out for the climax though and it probably wasn't as fantastically revealing and ingenious as the first movie, but was well built up nonetheless. It's perhaps not how you envisaged it and in all likeliness, not how you wanted it to be either, or maybe it was