Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Plot synopsis:
In 1891, Irene Adler delivers a package to Dr. Hoffmanstahl, payment for a letter he was to deliver. Hoffmanstahl opens the package, triggering a hidden bomb that is prevented from detonating by the intervention of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes takes the letter while Adler and Hoffmanstahl escape. Holmes finds Hoffmanstahl assassinated moments later. Adler meets with Professor Moriarty to explain the events, but Moriarty, deeming her position compromised by her love for Holmes, poisons and kills her.
Later, Dr. Watson arrives at 221B Baker Street, where Holmes discloses that he is investigating a series of seemingly unrelated murders, terrorist attacks and business acquisitions around the globe that he has connected to Moriarty. After meeting up with his brother Mycroft at Watson's bachelor party, Holmes meets with Gypsy fortune-teller Simza, the intended recipient of the letter he took from Adler, sent by her brother Rene. Holmes defeats an assassin sent to kill Simza, but she flees before Holmes can interrogate her. After the wedding of Watson and Mary Morstan, Holmes meets Moriarty for the first time. Voicing his respect for Holmes' perseverance, Moriarty informs Holmes that he murdered Adler. Holmes vengefully vows to defeat him and subtly requests Watson and Mary be left alone now that Watson is no longer working with him, but Moriarty indicates he will kill them anyway.
Moriarty's men attack Watson and Mary on a train to their honeymoon. Holmes, having followed the pair to protect them, throws Mary from the train into a river below where she is rescued by Mycroft. After defeating Moriarty's men, Holmes and Watson travel to Paris to locate Simza. When she is found, Holmes tells Simza that she has been targeted because Rene is working for Moriarty and may have told her about his plans. Simza takes the pair to the headquarters of an anarchist group to which she and Rene had formerly belonged. They learn that the anarchists have been forced to plant bombs for Moriarty.
The trio follows Holmes' deduction that the bomb is in the Paris Opera. However, Holmes realizes too late that he has been tricked and that the bomb is in a nearby hotel; the bomb kills a number of assembled businessmen. Holmes discovers that the bomb was a cover for the specific assassination of Alfred Meinhard, one of the attendees, by Moriarty's henchman, Sebastian Moran. Meinhard's death grants Moriarty ownership of Meinhard's arms factory in Germany. Holmes, Watson, and Simza travel there, following clues in Rene's letters.
At the factory, Moriarty captures, interrogates, and tortures Holmes while Watson fights Moran. Holmes spells out Moriarty's plot, revealing that the Professor secretly acquired shares in multiple war profiteering companies using various pseudonyms to conceal his identity and intends to instigate a world war to make himself a fortune. Meanwhile, Watson uses the cannon he had been hiding behind to destroy the watchtower in which Moran is concealed. The structure collapses into the warehouse where Moriarty is holding Holmes captive. Watson, Simza, and an injured Holmes reunite and escape aboard a moving train. Holmes deduces that Moriarty's final target will be a peace summit in Switzerland, creating an international incident.
At the summit, Holmes deduces that Rene is the assassin and that he is disguised as one of the ambassadors, having been given radical reconstructive surgery by Hoffmanstahl. Holmes and Moriarty, who is also in attendance, retreat upon a balcony to discuss their competing plans over a game of chess. Watson and Simza find Rene and stop his assassination attempt, but Rene is discreetly killed by Moran. Despite his war being averted, Moriarty remains confident in his victory, warning Holmes that the nations of Europe will inevitably go to war with one another regardless of Moriarty's manipulations. Holmes then reveals that, while being tortured by Moriarty, he replaced the professor's personal diary that contained all his plans and financing with a duplicate. The original was sent to Mary in London, who decrypted the code using a book that Holmes had noticed in Moriarty's office during their first meeting, before passing the information to Inspector Lestrade, who seizes Moriarty's assets and donates his fortune to anti-war charities. Holmes and Moriarty anticipate an impending physical altercation, and both realise that Moriarty would win due to Holmes' injured shoulder. Out of options and with the vindictive Moriarty promising to torture and kill Watson and Mary afterward, Holmes grabs Moriarty and throws them both over the balcony and into the Reichenbach Falls below.
Following Holmes' funeral, Watson and Mary prepare to have their belated honeymoon when Watson receives a package containing a breathing device of Mycroft's that Holmes had noticed before the summit. Realizing that Holmes may still be alive, Watson leaves his office to find the delivery man. Holmes, having concealed himself in Watson's office, reads Watson's memoirs on the typewriter and adds a question mark after the words "The End".

Tags: entertaining, comedy, mystery, murder, flashback, good versus evil, psychedelic, plot twist, alternate history

Review:
Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) contend with the salvation of civilization mostly through athletics, aided by director Guy Ritchie's considerable skill with the camera and graphics.But in the second half, when the duo moves swiftly but intellectually to confront the arch villain Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), my mind is at equilibrium, renewing my love of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original brainy, eccentric sleuth.
With Inspector Lastrade just a memory and Holmes's love, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), appearing briefly, we are left to enjoy not so much the interaction of Holmes and Watson but the explosiveness of Holmes and Moriarty.After a first half of explosions, the second half satisfies traditionalists like me for the chess game of life and death—and that's the suspenseful fate of the world in those pieces.
Together, they try to stop Moriarty from continuing his cruel schemes and Holmes learns about Moriarty's plan to start a war in which he will personally benefit from.There are lots of action scenes that keep the film exciting and keep the film running in a constant, fast pace.
Stephen Fry plays the role of Mycroft Holmes to perfection.I'd like to take some time discussing the character of Professor James Moriarty.
With powerful performances from the cast, this film is one not to be missed in this movie season.Final Verdict: "A Game of Shadows" is a stylish, fast-paced, yet comedic adventure which improves upon its predecessor in several aspects, and surely a highly recommended film.Rating: 8/10 Thanks for reading my review on "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows".
As much as I loved the character interactions and insane chemistry between Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, I was very much let down by Sherlock Holmes when I first saw it a few years ago.
Sherlock Holmes (Downey Jr.) believes it to be the work of the brilliant Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris).
He enlists the help of his sidekick, Watson (Law), to help him uncover the truth, before it is too late.With less of a focus on the occult, a stronger plot and a significantly more interesting villain, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows outdoes its predecessor in many respects.
It ups the thrills and the action, continues the fun, and delivers one of the better sequel going experiences this year.Even though the story is a bit wonky in certain respects (more on that in a moment), I feel A Game of Shadows manages to feel a lot more grounded than the original.
Hell, Richie potentially could have shown off a bit of his own style too, instead of just what he cribbed from everyone else.While the film still has its problems, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is an enjoyable ride from start to finish.
The use of slow motion in this film adds to the action.The only possible minus would be a little too much flesh from the weighty Stephen Fry. How Kelly Reilly kept her composure I have no idea, but I would expect it was easy to look away.The best part for me was the verbal war of wits between Moriarty and Holmes especially.Clever writing and acting.
Sadly, Director Guy Ritchie lost his way.As a pairing, Holmes, played by Robert Downey Jnr ,and Watson, by Jude Law, worked first time around.
Stephen fry is excellent as Sherlock's brother, Geraldine James has pitifully little screen time as housekeeper Mrs Hudson yet delights whenever she appears, and Kelly Reilly does well in an underwritten role as Dr Watson's new wife.The plot is a noisy mess, and is largely threadbare.
It could and should have been an deep, intelligent, complex, wit and promising theme for a movie...The humour is forced, shallow and lame, there is a plot but it is not represented in the rank of Sherlock Holmes class....it's all mixed up and I don't like the result.
It could and should have been an deep, intelligent, complex, wit and promising theme for a movie...The humour is forced, shallow and lame, there is a plot but it is not represented in the rank of Sherlock Holmes class....it's all mixed up and I don't like the result.
It could and should have been an deep, intelligent, complex, wit and promising theme for a movie...The humour is forced, shallow and lame, there is a plot but it is not represented in the rank of Sherlock Holmes class....it's all mixed up and I don't like the result.
His investigations point to Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris) as the responsible for the explosions.When Dr. Watson and Mary are attacked in the train while traveling for their honeymoon in Brighton, Sherlock Holmes delivers Mary to the protection of his brother Mycroft Holmes (Stephen Fry).
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is a boring, dull and overrated film by Guy Ritchie.
It is not clever but tiring and way, way, way overdone.The plot is weak at best and confused by constantly noisy effects and over loud music and soundtrack, and a somewhat muddled dialog track.Sherlock Holmes in the old, old movie with Basil Rathbone, engaged the audience with clever deduction, logic, verbal bantering and clever writing and editing.Ritchie decides to make Grand Theft Sherlock, to the horror of fans who love the subtlety of Doyle.
Read the original stories folks, you will be richly rewarded.Within a few months you will have forgotten you saw this mess, and when the third ones comes out, you will have forgotten the messy early ones.Oh,the plot, something about world war and saving the world and war is human condition, yada, yada, yada...I think Ritchie's mom gave him a camera for Christmas and he said, "Look ma, I can take one second shots of everything and people will think it is a movie"..
And then gets kicked in the gut.It's as if Guy Richie took courses from Michael Bay on how to make a typical American movie: Think about the cool special effects first and try to build a story around them after...though, really, the story is not that important.After an astonishingly good first instalment that featured top-notch acting, storytelling AND great special effects (and despite Rachel McAdams), Holmes returns for another caper with Jude Law's Watson in tow.
If you enjoy a good Sherlock Holmes detective film with an engaging, suspenseful plot, then you will be tremendously disappointed!.
It's a nice film inspired on splendid novels about Sherlock Holmes character written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , including a first-range nasty with malignant aims incarnated by the Napoleon of Crime Doctor Moriarty .
This time , Sherlock Holmes , Robert Downey Jr , his sidekick Dr. Watson , Jude Law , and a gypsy named Simza , Noomi Rapace , with the help of Holmes' older brother Mycroft Holmes , Stephen Fry , all of them join forces to outwit and bring down their fiercest adversary, Professor Moriarty .
Robert Downey Jr.'s interpretation is magnificent , he's a Sherlock for modern times , of course very different to Basil Rathbone considered the best Holmes in the cinema , along with Peter Cushing and Jeremy Brett in television.
I watched Game of shadows with hope as I enjoyed his earlier outing of Sherlock Holmes even though I am a big fan of the books and TV series.
The point is Guy Ritchie had one of the best characters, scripts,etc and didn't need to reduce it to just plain rubbish British crime caper.If the names weren't Sherlock Holmes and Watson, I could have accepted it as a pretty ordinary buddy action movie with some good scenes.This is pathetic!.
The thing about Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes is it's designed more as an action film than a mystery.
A lot of action and of drama.Robert Downey Jr makes a great job with Jude Law.The movie combine very well the action wtih comedy.Irene Adler it's fabulous in his role.She is very beauty.Jared Harris makes a great job in the role of the bad guy .I wait for this movie for 2 years,but the waiting it wasn't in van.Special effects are very good.The plot is very nice write.Guy Ritchie is one of my favourite directors.The music is epic .Hans Zimmer made a great job for this movie.After my opinion Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows it's better than Sherlock Holmes(2009).I hope he will win al least one Academy award.If i make a list of movies from 2011 which you should watch this is for sure on that list..
Waking up early in the morning to catch the first day first show of Sherlock Holmes because you are a serious Guy Ritchie fan and have seen all his movies and loved them,well I had some ideas that maybe it wont be good enough and guess what i was right.I was disappointed with Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr whom people are regarding as an "Amazing Actor" well let me just tell you this Game of Shadows was a complete downer not only because of drifting screenplay and predictable plot but also because of juvenile acting done by our Mr Holmes here.The script was fine but i sincerely felt the previous movie was way better than this one.Only Jude Law and Jared Harris saved the day for me throughout this 129 minutes of what they call a movie which actually was a messing up everything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle worked on..
Many characters in this movie doesn't exist in the original book, a lot of the main story of the film don't exist in the book and Sherlock Holmes don't act like the Sherlock Holmes in the book would have done.
Without the crucial character development that made the stories great, this is simply a superficial action movie with "Sherlock Holmes" as the title..
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was ultimately the better of the two films, and was honestly a fun and entertaining movie.
You don't go into a Guy Ritchie directed movie expecting something intelligent, but even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be shocked at how much the mystery of Sherlock Holmes has been reduced in this sequel.
There are more than enough small laughs and set pieces to deliver adequate amusement, but the misuse of Moriarty becomes the film's biggest disappointment – in addition to yet another muddled and damn near incoherent retelling of another Sherlock Holmes movie.
For all of the flashy set pieces and costumes A Game of Shadows shows off, it can't hide the emptiness that cursed the first film.In his latest adventure, Holmes (Downey Jr.) believes that a series of attacks throughout Europe are linked to scholar and equally brilliant Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), who has someone Holmes knows well killed to get what he wants.
To do this, they need the help of gypsy Simza Heron (Noomi Rapace), whose brother could be involved in Moriarty's plot to assassinate a powerful political figure and start war in a time of peace.It pretty much comes down to this as to whether you'll like A Game of Shadows.
But I do give the sequel one good thing: the action is better staged and better crafted even with all the slow motion techniques Guy Ritchie picked up from Zack Snyder.The meaty parts of the film of course involve explosions, and A Game of Shadows is never short of them.
As cunning and brilliant as he his, Moriarty fails to find a voice here despite Jared Harris' excellent work in a devious role, one that unfortunately is undermined by the general lack of motivation he is given in A Game of Shadows.That comes with the fault of the script, which acts as nothing more than a series of set pieces disguised as puzzles to keep us on our feet.
Robert Downey Jr. gives the movie so much and I honestly couldn't imaging any other actor playing the role of Holmes so great, fun and charismatically as he does.Definitely an inferior sequel but still fun, good and entertaining enough all!7/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/.
More importantly, it never seems like a Sherlock Holmes movie.From the start (actually, before the start) we know who our nemesis is: Professor James Moriarty.
But I realized that the story (or stories) here merely form a kind of scarecrow on which director Ritchie could hang set-piece action sequences, camera tricks and CGI wizardry, while the actors mugged like children in a bad school play about someone or other they called "Sherlock Holmes," for no other reason than they had heard the name while running around a TV set with an old movie playing on it.Childishly campy, visually ugly (that mind-numbing slo-mo - stop it!), badly written, and horribly over-acted; of course it made millions.
Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) again battle wits with arch enemy Professor James Moriarty.
I feel many of us would have liked Robert Downey Jr to become another Action Hero (yes, other than Iron Man) with another name and not Sherlock Holmes.
Unfortunately this movie sells out to an American "Hollywood" audience, and as a result alienates fans of the Sherlock Holmes genre.Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are very entertaining, however Rachel McAdams is painful and brings little to the movie other than the usual fluttering of her eye lashes and cliché promiscuity.Guy Ritchie seems to be a one trick pony.
But if you took it as a movie about characters that just happen to have names like Holmes and Watson but are otherwise their own thing, it was pretty decent.That cannot, alas, be said for the sequel, which is just plain dull.
I, as a fan of Sherlock Holmes and of the portrayals given by Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, personally loved the first Sherlock Holmes, it was fun, stylish and clever, with impeccably matched leads and a good villain, even with moments of annoying slow-motion, things getting convoluted and draggy in the second hour and Rachel McAdams.Although the trailers suggested otherwise, I very much enjoyed this sequel.
Sherlock Holmes a game of shadows...i have been waiting for seeing this movie for a long time, n at last i got the chance.
the first movie i found boring in some stages but overall that was not so bad.in fact that movie was good enough to make me look forward to the sequel..Robert Downey Jr. has been developed as Sherlock Holmes,and his chemistry with Jude law is really good to watch and this time they are working together to solve a case which is one of the biggest case Sherlock has ever had.They are now after professor James Moriarty.
Jared Harris as professor Moriarty played his character in a nice way and convinced me as a good opponent of Holmes.Rachel McAdam's role as Irene Adler is reduced in this movie.
and he has a lot of chances to make this film great but he failed.what so ever, Sherlock Holmes a game of shadow is an entertaining movie and it has a exiting climax n also has a nice ending?.
Sherlock Holmes is back; this time he is pit into a game of shadows against Professor Moriarty, admirably underplayed by Jared Harris.
That should be seen for the die-hard fans of the great English detective, but for anyone looking for entertainment, which is the real purpose of this film, Sherlock Holmes 2 is one to watch..
He has given us a fresh look into Sherlock Holmes that we have read about, which I think keeps the stories and ideas of Holmes alive.Along with his excellent fresh ideas and overall movie making, Robert Downey Jr., and Jude Law give great performances once again.
They have the BEST chemistry I have seen between a Holmes and Watson character, which is one reason why this movie is so great.Also, I think that the villain, Prof.
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law reprise their roles as the resourceful Sherlock and his doctor friend and their gimmicky misadventures ensue.The plot this time around concerns the evil Professor Moriarty ( a formidable Jared Harris ) who wants to profit from the war any illegal way he can.
Guy Ritchie has taken a last chapter from Sherlock Holmes series to create a film where he would meet his arch rival , Professor James Moriarty.
Coming to the performances, could you ever think of anyone apart from Robert Downey Jr who can play the character of Sherlock Holmes so effectively.
Either way, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is entertaining and fun to watch.
From the performance, Robert Downey Jr. has did it again with his character as Sherlock Holmes, even Dr. John Watson's performance by Jude Law really got a lot of improvement too..
The first film of this series was for me of average quality, the kind of movie that felt like a generic Hollywood action adventure movie labelled as Sherlock Holmes.
The film can actually think itself pretty smart at times especially with the thought process Holmes goes to when just about to fight, of course if you see the first movie you are used to it but it still feels a little gimmicky how it is done and played out afterwards.So overall Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is one movie that is good and I think an improvement over the first one that felt so mediocre.
"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is not as good as the first film in the series, but it does benefit from an interesting villain.
Even Better than the First Movie; Fans Should Love It. I really enjoyed Guy Ritchie's first SHERLOCK HOLMES.
The scope on this one is about as large as a good Holmes movie can get without going too over-the-top, and they've already brought out the detectives most cunning enemy: Moriarty.If you want to make a blockbuster icon out of Sherlock Holmes, you can't do better than Robert Downey Jr. He continues to be great in the role, even if he does come off as a little cartoonish this time around.