Lipstick in the gun cartridge

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2012)

You probably know already that this is modeled after The Final Problem. Doyle's design with that was a heroic end to Holmes so he could go back to more literary aspirations. Of course the public wouldn't have any of it, so the series went on. But here's the thing. Doyle came up with a convincing account of Holmes escape; he never left the cliff. The film's solution in keeping with everything else is daft movie logic. Everything else from Doyle's story has been amped to blockbuster scale, Moriarty is in control of entire nations, Holmes has to save Europe from war on a cataclysmic scope.
Logic is not strictly the point of course, something else is, which brings us to the titular game. This is the one ambitious bit.
Now Sherlock Holmes is no ordinary detective, by this point he's vested in the public mind with practically superhero powers. What Doyle had in mind however was simply expert boxer and a master in logic, meaning the ability to see structures of causation instead of trifle detail. The whole point extending to the writing endeavor itself was structured chaos, a chain of events that appears chaotic to the remote viewer but in fact had been plotted that way by a writer in full control. The plot only made sense when he told it in the end, for example the miraculous escape at Reichenbach, not so miraculous upon hearing about it (in the original).
In the film this is expertly rendered as Holmes being able to know the plot in advance, then reality resumes as envisioned. But this is Moriarty's plot on a larger level, where the same rules of structured chaos apply - people on the streets experience acts of random anarchy but we know it is all being scripted and controlled by Moriarty. So the arch is that Holmes will have to rise to the level where authorship of the world is decided and there best the existing writer in storytelling wit.
(If you want more Doyle reference about this, an early description of Holmes in Scarlet is that he knows nothing about philosophy or politics but an immense deal about crime fiction. This is how Holmes solves cases, the same way writers plot them. This conceit is key in detective fiction, a writer's fiction. Another famous example? Dashiel Hammett, Pinkerton agent turned detective writer.)
This means that Holmes can no longer be in the same room as the plot and really has to trust that he has written characters astute enough to carry out deductions in his place. Watson has learned enough from Holmes to see this part through. Clever.
All the threads point towards film noir, including Moriarty as a Dr. Mabuse type controlling from out of sight.