A Step Down from Perfection

Rating: 9/10 (28 December 2011)

I spent my childhood watching old Sherlock Holmes movies with my dad and trying to convince the other kids on the playground to pretend to be Dr. Watson so I could play Sherlock. Needless to say, when Guy Ritchie attempted to re-brand Holmes and Watson as action heroes in 2009, a move that caused much gnashing of teeth from others, I went into the theater with high expectations. They were exceeded. I loved everything about that movie, every performance, every shot, every line of dialogue, and every note of Hans Zimmer's score. It was perfect.
The sequel, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is a pretty good movie, but it can't beat perfection.
What I feared would be missing going in, and what indeed was missing, was the sense of the unknown. Would Sherlock Holmes work as an action movie? It did, and still kind of does, and still was surprisingly faithful to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's source material. How would Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law do as Holmes and Watson? They were, and still are, the freshest take on the characters since Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. How would Guy Ritchie do helming a big-budget blockbuster? The style from his gritty crime films translated well into the epic scale, though in the sequel there's more style than substance.
But the most crucial surprises came from the plot. It was an original story that created a new enemy for Holmes. Lord Blackwood, played chillingly by Mark Strong, was a crafty adversary who may or may not have had supernatural powers. Here he is replaced by Holmes' most conventional enemy, Professor Moriarty, played by Jared Harris, and his right-hand man, played by Paul Anderson. I won't name him here, because only hardcore fans of Doyle's canon will appreciate it, and for them it would be a spoiler. As the title implies, the focus of the film is a "game" of cat and mouse between Holmes and the Professor. While it's riveting to watch, the lack of a clearly defined mystery like in the previous film makes it harder for the audience to play along.
The main flaws lie with the script. "Game of Shadows" ditches the first film's stable of writers (including Lionel Wigram, who spearheaded production of the previous film and has now been reduced to a producer credit) in favor of Michele and Kieran Mulroney, known for a couple of Indie comedies. While the previous film had some quirky comedy, the new script ratchets it up to sometimes annoying levels. (A pro-longed "breakfast" analogy during a fight sequence is especially groan- inducing.) Also, the movie goes even further into action movie territory than the last effort, favoring chase scenes and explosions over a plot actually worthy of the great detective, with a story that seems made for James Bond rather than Sherlock Holmes. The movie also borrows more generously from Doyle's stories, so while die-hard Sherlock fans will grin at the many references, they'll also probably be able to see what's coming before Holmes and Watson do.
It's obvious Warner Bros. took more interest in the sequel than the prequel. While this means a welcome bigger budget, apparent in more exotic locations and bigger (and more frequent) pyrotechnics, it also means more studio meddling, possibly evident in the heavy recycling of the tricks Guy Ritchie used in the last movie. I'm sure, if left alone, Guy Ritchie could have created a sequel just as fresh and interesting as the prequel. Even Hans Zimmer's score, while still good, consists mainly of recycled cues from his other Sherlock score.
The saving grace is the great cast and their chemistry with each other. Downey Jr. and Law play off each other just as well as last time. Stephen Fry plays Sherlock's older brother Mycroft, another character exported from Doyle's canon. He and Sherlock call each other by the pet names "Mycey" and "Sherlie" respectively, which is not from the canon, but feels right, and Fry even looks like the Sidney Paget illustrations from the canon. His share of the comic relief is the wittiest. Sadly, Eddie Marsan's Inspector Lestrade is reduced to a cameo, at best.
But the best scenes are between Holmes and his nemesis. Rather than following the clichés that come with most portrayals of Moriarty, "Game of Shadows" takes the Professor back to his roots as a respected math scholar who leads a double life as a crime lord. Jared Harris is perfectly cast in the role, and the climactic scene between Downey Jr. and Harris is spine-tingling good and alone worth the price of admission.