Indubitably, my dear Watson

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2013)

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson throughout a 14 film series which started in 1939 and ended in 1946. Younger audiences are largely unfamiliar with these films, but some are very good and worth seeking out. For many, Basil and Nigel are the "definitive" Holmes and Watson, some of their films even on par with Bogart's "The Big Sleep" and "The Maltese Falcon".
Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" series, of course, is a different beast altogether. Big budget action comedies, Ritchie's franchise depends heavily on the sheer exuberance of actor Robert Downey Jr, who plays the film's titular hero. Manic and overflowing with energy, Downey plays Holmes like a cross between two of his previous roles, the armoured superhero of "Iron Man" and the motor-mouthed detective of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang". Resolutely postmodern, his Holmes is a jester, a trickster, pure Id unleashed. A giant bag of unrestrained ego, Downey's always right, seems to know the future and is always in total control, even when (or especially when) absolutely wrong.
The sequel to Ritchie's first Holmes film, "A Game of Shadows" possesses all the positives and negatives of its predecessor. It sports some nice Victorian-era scenery, is pleasantly under-lit for a blockbuster (lots of muted, murky lighting to simulate the grungy tone of late-1800s Britain) and Downey's schizophrenic performance mirrors, sadly, our own postmodern, drug-addled brains. Watching him is like checking your email and flicking through a digital TV-guide, all at once.
Like Ritchie's first film, "Shadows'" plot is mostly junk. Ritchie's script is lazy and cheats often, Holmes magically solving problems, deus ex machinas whimsically conjured up and our heroes figuring out ridiculously complex problems simply because their screenwriters will closure into fruition. In Ritchie's defence, this is exactly how most Holmes tales functioned. And while your typical detective story ends with a coda in which the hero "explains" and "ties together" the story the audience has just watched/read, Ritchie's "Holmes" is packed with miniature mysteries within the main mystery which are "solved" using similar flashback/flash-forward devices. We're thus offered a "heightened" form of your typical detective walk-through.
The film's villain is Professor Moriarty, a character who, like Holmes, possesses a near supernatural intellect. Some context: Charles Darwin published the "The Origin of Species" in 1859 and Arthur Conan Doyle his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887. It is commonly thought that Doyle's hero owed much to the development of the nineteenth century scientific method, with its emphasis on observation, logic, deduction and a dash of imagination and daring, but Holmes, with his unbelievable gifts for problem solving and frequent impossible leaps of logic, was originally meant as a joke, a mockery of the flurry of scientific discoveries that the era saw being made. Doyle was himself fond of mysticism, spiritualism, magic and often wrote about the Dark Arts. He cooked up Holmes as an attempt to ridicule that which he believed was slowly killing off various branches of enchantment, religion and spirituality. Of course this backfired completely. People are fond of order, control and the commanding aura of Holmes, and quickly took the detective to heart. From then on, Doyle found himself unable to abandon the character.
What's interesting about "Shadows" is that Moriarty is as much an uber intellect as Holmes (Holmes specialises in inductive, not deductive reasoning). Indeed, the guy's brain is so big, he's single handedly manipulating whole countries, controlling continents and orchestrating World War 1! Standout scenes include Holmes and Moriarty locking horns over chessboards, both masterminds attempting to anticipate and counter the anticipations and counters of their foes. These scenes of intellectual sparring work well. What works less well are the film's countless big, action set pieces, which seem tacked on to satisfy blockbuster junkies. In this regard, Ritchie's Holmes is very much a 21st century hero, a guy who must be all things to everyone, ticking all boxes, catering for all demographics and all audience needs. He's comedian, brain and muscle man, all at once. Part sitcom, part vaudeville, part mystery, part action movie, it's the kind of film that's too dumb to take seriously, but, paradoxically, whenever it takes itself seriously you want it to shut up and get back to comical buffoonery.
7.9/10 – Slight, but faster and funnier than its predecessor. Better Holmes flicks: "Zero Effect", "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939), "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1939), "They Might Be Giants" (1971). Worth one viewing.