Witty, rollicking Game of Shadows; surprisingly great Holmes!

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2012)

I went into this movie not knowing quite what to expect -- I've been a Sherlock Holmes fan since I can remember, and I missed the first Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ) Sherlock movie because I'd heard it turned Holmes into some kind of Victorian-era action hero. Well, that was my loss - I LOVED this film. It's a rollicking, slam-bang, intelligent, witty and compelling update of the Sherlock Holmes canon, and surprisingly, in many cases it is closer to Arthur Conan Doyle's original concept of the characters than many earlier movies and TV shows have been. Doyle, remember, was writing popular, mass-market entertainments - and his Sherlock is not a stuffy, sedentary dude who just sits around in his armchair puffing his pipe and working out Great Deductions. The original Sherlock IS a man of action -- he is a boxer (yes, that's canon!) and in "The Final Problem," where he fights Moriarty to the death at Reichenbach Falls, we learn he knows an Asian martial art called "baritsu" (there actually IS one called "bartitsu," which may have been what Doyle meant). So RDJ's take on Sherlock is spot-on canonical -- manic, genius-brilliant, a bare-knuckle fighter, a martial-arts expert, a violinist, an imbiber of intoxicating substances (though they don't show his cocaine habit - interestingly, it was OK to mention it in Doyle's age, but in ours, it has to be Sherlock swigging stuff like formaldehyde and gypsy wine, although Mrs. Hudson does mention he survives on a diet of tea and "coca leaves"...).
RDJ's Holmes is also dashingly handsome, as is, for once, Dr. Watson (how could he not be, when played by Jude Law?). And this, too, makes absolute sense -- Watson was portrayed by Doyle as a wounded war hero recently returned from Afghanistan (that earlier Afghan conflict that England found itself embroiled in), so it would make sense that Watson would be fairly young and in fighting trim (Law uses a cane and limps a little, due to that war wound, but he's a mean hand with both a stick and a gun) -- not some old, querulous duffer as portrayed by so many earlier actors taking on Watson.
There's a fair amount of covert (and overt, hilariously enough!) slashiness (fan term for, er, ultra-bromance) going on - Holmes and Watson are definitely crushing on each other; they bicker and make up like a married couple, which is the ongoing in-joke of both movies (yup, I've seen the first one, now, too!). All this means the ladies don't get to do a whole lot -- "The Woman" of Holmes' life, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) is in this movie only very briefly (and I'm not buying that she's gone for good...). Watson's new wife, Mary, gets booted early, too, but I can tell there's a lot more going on there - I'm liking Mary, and she gets to do a little a**-kicking of her own in this one. The leading lady of this movie is Noomi Rapace, playing the gypsy Madame Simza -- Noomi is the original Swedish "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," and she's put on a few curves to take on this, her first big role in an American movie. She does well here, but her character is mostly a plot device to lead us to the middle of the web woven by Holmes' arch-nemesis, the "Napoleon of crime," Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris of "Mad Men," son of the late Richard Harris).
Now here is a villain worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Harris' Moriarty radiates menace, with his foxy face and yellowy teeth; he's here (in 1891)trying to create a sort of proto-World War I by taking over the whole line of products, "from bullets to bandages" -- including an armaments factory where some enormously anachronistic weapons are being manufactured, which becomes a setpiece battleground in the movie. Nicely done, too. Director Ritchie may have gone a bit overboard in his extreme slo-mo sequences, showing bullets crashing through and splintering trees as our heroes flee through a German forest, but it's all undeniably beautiful. The effect of his "Holmes-o-vision" (where Holmes -- and we -- "see" what will happen in a fight just before the fight takes place) is also very cool, especially when things don't quite turn out as Holmes pre-envisions them. It's especially effective in the final confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty at Reichenbach, where the two engage in one of the great cinematic chess matches of all time (and half of it is in their heads, not on the board! And yes, there's a "chess adviser" listed in the credits, so I have to assume the moves are all realistic...).
A large part of the joy of this movie is just seeing an ultra-intelligent character who also gets to be an action hero -- so often, intellect is downplayed in movies, or relegated to the bad guy (aren't the bad guys always the brainy ones?); or the intellectual is portrayed as a sedentary "man of thought" rather than action, as in most earlier Sherlocks. This Sherlock Holmes dares to break the mold, and for that I say "Huzzah!" and here's to many more in this series. Thumbs way up!