![]() Back again is Irene Adler ( Rachel McAdams), the enigmatic figure in much romantic speculation about Holmes. Mycroft, Holmes' brother, turns out to be well-placed at the center of European diplomacy Stephen Fry has plummy good fun in the role, especially in nude moments where he shields his netherlands from view by employing artfully arranged foregrounds in the "Austin Powers" tradition. ![]() His wife must be thankful that Holmes abruptly eliminated her from most of the action. He's not just a confidante and chronicler but a hero, too, involved in fights and shootouts. "A Game of Shadows" opens with him recalling these events on a typewriter that is too modern for 1895 but maybe suggests he's writing years later. Watson has a more proactive role this time. This returns the story somewhat to the Conan Doyle tradition that Holmes did most of his best work in his mind.ĭr. As played by Jared Harris, Moriarty doesn't gnash or fulminate, but fences with Holmes in barbed language. Their struggle comes to a head in an elegant, high-stakes chess game, held for some reason in Switzerland in the dead of a winter night on a snowy outdoor balcony. Guy Ritchie and his writers Michele and Kieran Mulroney, however, wisely devote some of their best scenes to one-on-ones between Holmes and Moriarty. (I am using "intimate" as both a noun and an insinuation.) It's more of a case for James Bond, and Moriarty's grandiosity seems on a scale with a Bond villain. Once this game is afoot, it seems too large to be contained by the eccentric investigator of 221B Baker Street and Watson, his intimate. The lives of many European heads of state are threatened, and Holmes is the only hope to keep the peace. Moriarty would profit handsomely from that because he operates an enormous secret munitions factory, turning out everything from machine pistols to gigantic cannons. Most of the film centers on a climax in the long-standing feud between Holmes and Professor James Moriarty ( Jared Harris), who beneath his cover as an Oxford don, is the mastermind of an anarchist plot to use bombings and assassinations to push Europe into war. ![]() ![]() At one point, he throws Mary off the train, but to be fair, it's to save her life. Holmes (Downey), who considers himself every bit as much good company as the doctor could possibly require, deplores this development, and indeed even joins the blissful couple on their honeymoon train journey. In the first film, we learned of his engagement to Mary Watson ( Kelly Reilly), and now a date has been set for the poor girl. "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" opens with an emergency that threatens to rock Holmes' world: Dr. What they have done, however, is add a degree of refinement and invention, and I enjoyed this one more than the earlier film. and Jude Law grossed something like half a billion dollars, this was no time to rethink the approach. After Guy Ritchie's " Sherlock Holmes" (2009) with Robert Downey Jr. This is a modern action picture played in costume. The movie all but hurtles through episodes that would be leisurely set pieces in a traditional Holmes story. We see a great deal of Victorian London (and Paris and Switzerland) in "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," but we must look quickly.
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