Action first of all and visual effects

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2012)

Quite a well done film situated at the very moment when Sherlock Holmes is supposed to die in the Alps to be resuscitated twenty years later or so by his author Sir Conna Doyle. Of course here there is no suspense. We know the end.
But the characters of Holmes – and his brother mind you – Dr Watson and their arch-enemy Dr Moriarty are so well acted and depicted that just for these three or four guys you have to go and enjoy the action. In 1891 in Europe everything was centered on France and Germany and England was something like the umpire. By playing on that situation the film, just like the original stories, is super dramatic since we know such efforts are vain since they will only postpone the event. Sooner or later the industrialized war will have to happen and after that one the industrialized genocide will have to come before the world can finally start thinking twice before shooting the first bullet.
The action is packed so tight that we cannot even breathe between the sequences and we travel all over the continent, London, Strasburg, Paris, Iceland, and some other places. Perfect. Good entertainment, even if the gay innuendo is a little bit insistent with Sherlock's brother being even more on that side than Sherlock himself. It is in a way funny but maybe next time we could move on and just imagine a Sherlock Holmes who likes adventure and a Dr Watson who knows adventure is never funny alone and is a lot better, like chess and draughts in pairs. But if the director gets his kicks out of this, let him get his kicks and let us get a smile, though Sherlock is a lot better at dressing like an armchair than disguising himself as a woman. The beard shows quite nicely under the lipstick.