Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – Movie Review

Published on Sunday, 01 January 2012 22:26

Igor Hrenovac

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Finally found the time to watch the movie this week and since I’m a big fan of Guy Ritchie movies, not to mention Sherlock Holmes novels as well, I had high expectations for the movie, like I had for its prequel. It didn’t fail to deliver. The casting, like in the first part, was great, but I wasn’t expecting anything less from Robert Downey Jr., who just seems to find himself at home playing egotistical geniuses as is Sherlock Holmes, and Jude Law as his faithful partner in the role of dr. John Watson. Sadly we couldn’t see much from Rachel McAdams as her character, Irene Adler, dies fairly quickly in the start, but it was replaced by Noomi Rapace playing gypsy fortune teller Madam Simza who will accompany our duo throughout the movie against Napoleon of crime, as Sherlock named him, professor James Moriarty played by talented Jared Harris. Also, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes, played by Stephen Fry, will be helping them from time to time and will also add bit more comedy.

The movie itself starts off with a big bang, literally, and from thereon there are only few scenes in which there’s no action or suspense. Dr. Watson’s wedding, meeting with Madam Simza in the gypsy camp and talk between Mycroft and Mary, which is actually a very funny scene. Other than those 3 the movie is constant action. If Sherlock started using some weird gizmos this could easily be mistaken by some James Bond movie from the end of 19^th century, but with good guidance from Guy Ritchie, it hasn’t.

The movie, as I’ve said, is happening at the end of the 19^th century and there’s much tension between European countries cause of bomb attacks. For an ordinary person, these bomb attacks seem unrelated to one another, but Sherlock Holmes isn’t ordinary person so he made a string theory  and pinpointed the real mastermind behind the attacks, professor James Moriarty. Since Moriarty is an extinguish person in society and has connections to the prime minister he can’t just point his finger in him and say “Arrest him!”, also that would be a very short movie then. Instead he needs to find evidence that Moriarty is behind all of this, which will prove to be quite a challenge since brilliant professor knows how to leave the scene without leaving any traces with the help of his right hand man, colonel Sebastian Moran (Paul Anderson). Professional soldier, cold, methodical and one of the best sharpshooters of the time. In his search he will be aided by dr. Watson, who’s actually about to get married, but before settling down he’s going to help Holmes one last time. I think he’s just annoyed that Holmes is “killing” his dog over and over. The duo will become triple at Watson’s bachelor party where Holmes will meet and save Madam Simza, a fortune teller whose brother is connected to a terrorist cell in Paris that is just one of many cells Moriarty is using to its own ends. She will be his only lead in finding and stopping Moriarty before he can commence a global scale war, a world war. Their quest will lead them through Paris wine basements of the said terrorist cell, over Germany forests where they will found Moriarty’s weapon factory to Switzerland where the final conflict between Holmes and Moriarty will happen.

Overall, this is a very good movie and I strongly recommend it for anyone.

by Livingstone