A great rendition of Sherlock Holmes

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2012)

Well, a not so long awaited sequel to Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes has arrived and my initial thoughts on this movie is that it is good, but it is nowhere near as good as the first one. While it is clear that there was always going to be a sequel, and that the sequel was going to involve Holmes going up against his arch enemy Moriarty, it is always difficult to beat what was, in all intent and purposes, a brilliant movie. This, as I said, simply did not have the same drawing power that the first movie had.
There is a lot of debate about how true to form Ritchie was in creating his Sherlock Holmes. While I would hardly say that it is spot on (the original Holmes did not seem to have the same amount of eccentricities that the original Holmes did, and I will not even try to compare him with other Holmes) upon reading some of the short stories I do feel that Ritchie has captured the essence of what Sherlock Holmes is, and in a way that at least attracted me to actually considering his stories.
This film, as mentioned, is about Moriarty and is set in 1891, the year that Sherlock Holmes dies. Anybody who is familiar with the stories will know that the only time Holmes confronts Moriarty is in the story 'A Final Problem' and in this story it is insinuated (though not actually said) that Sherlock Holmes dies when both he and Moriarty plummet off of a waterfall. One can thus work out how this movie ends.
However, it is interesting to note that the characters in this movie do not resemble the drawings that accompanied most of the stories. Moriarty in this film, while being a very evil person, is not the older man with sunken features, but rather a full fleshed man who is a respect man within society. This is because Moriarty is truly Holmes' match. While Irene Adler is often mentioned as the only woman to have ever outwitted Holmes, Moriarty is the man with whom Holmes meets his match. However, Moriarty does not win, because in Holmes, Moriarty has also met his match.
I found the ending to be very disappointing though. While it is only insinuated in the books that Holmes dies after struggling with Moriarty, it is clear from this film that he does not. I find that disappointing, and has in a sense put me off any further films that might be made. Personally, I hope that Ritchie does not go down that track, unless, of course, he decides to create some backstories, or maybe even work off some of the books. I do not believe that the first movie is based on any particular story, while the second film is only very loosely based on 'A Final Problem'.
I do believe that Ritchie has got the characters reasonably right, however the chronology in the films is different to the books. In the books Watson is already married, however in the films it is suggested that it is when he marries that he decides he no longer wants to go on any adventures. Obviously there is also the glaring anachronisms, such as the automobile and the machine pistols, both of which I do not believe existed in 1891.