More good fun

Rating: 8/10 (23 December 2011)

A Game Of Shadows is the sequel to Guy Ritchie's very successful reimagining of the Sherlock Holmes mythos. Holmes embarks on a battle of wits (and more) against Professor James Moriarty (whose shadowy existence was introduced tangentially in the previous film, and the occasion of Watson's marriage is one of the early incidents in the incident-packed journey from the end of this film to the final showdown between Holmes and Moriarty.
Unusually for me, I spotted the maguffin which was critical to the twist in the tail when it was introduced: otherwise, this complicated film meandered satisfactorily all over the place. I'm not sure it all made sense: however, I was always so confused that it doesn't really matter whether it did or not. This is broadly similar to the first movie, where it wasn't until I had watched it a second time that I felt it broadly made sense.
This film works on the basis "If it ain't broke, don't fix it": thus, like the first one, we have a convoluted plot, we have a number of sequences where Holmes' thought processes are unravelled, we have the slow-fast-slow editing and slow motion explosions, we have plenty of period atmosphere, and we have the very pleasing chemistry between Holmes and Watson. Added to this are Holmes' brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry, very enjoyable notwithstanding the brothers' somewhat improbably habit of referring to each other as Mike and Shirley) and Jared Harris' wonderful Moriarty, a very believable Machiavellian thinker, planner, manipulator, and cold-blooded killer. And, importantly, Holmes' equal.
There were a lot of laughs in the cinema - this film is funnier than a lot of films which call themselves comedies.
I enjoyed it as much as its predecessor.