Sherlock Holmes 2 Game of Shadows : It’s A Lot More Than Elementary My Dear Watson…

I’ve got a problem with rehashing characters that have been rehashed a million times. It’s boring. Plain and simple. For instance, you know what I didn’t want to see this year? A Three Musketeers movie. Why? It’s literally going to be the same as all of the other Three Musketeers movies out there, and not illuminate anything new about European history, or what it meant to be a Musketeer, or anything else. So, you can imagine how skeptical I was that the second Sherlock Holmes would be any good. I didn’t see the first one in theatres, but caught it on the T.V and thought it was an okay film. It was Guy Ritchie gimmicky, and the acting was good, but it just didn’t impress me. Now, I’ve seen everything else worth watching this year, and we’re going to put some effort into Action A Go Go movie of the year poll, so I felt like I needed to make an effort to give those last few movies out the gate one last shot. That left me with a dilemma, should I watch Tin Tin or SH 2? Troy said SH2, so here we are.

What works about the movie? It melds very well. With the first movie, everything was odd, and thrown in, and it worked because Guy Ritchie is able to drive a movie forward with a mad mixture of great characterizations and flashy, laser cut images that take you there no questions asked. He can just do that sort of thing. With this movie (as with all good sequels) they know what worked, what didn’t and turned up the heat where necessary. The action doesn’t feel so pretentious. Important characters (not just faceless victims) actually die. Holmes isn’t quite so SUPER, and actually meets his mental and physical match in Moriarty (played excellently by Jared Harris of MAD MEN fame). Noomi Rapace (original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2009) is Madam Sizma Heron, an excellent addition to the cast who holds her own throughout. Watson (Jude Law) is still whiney in this one, but now it actually serves the plot, and surprisingly enough so does Watson’s wife, Mary Watson (Kelly Reilly) is also a bit more important this time around.

My favorite new edition to the cast is Mycroft Holmes (Played by an always affable Stephen Fry). What do I like about this new character? He is just so damn old school, nose in the air British. He was great, and if there is a third (Which I now strangely hope there is) I hope he'll play a bigger role.

Also, the forest firefight is wicked awesome.

Anything wrong with the movie? The story isn’t that great, and Moriarty is all that great of a bad guy. He’s better than the last bad guy, that’s for sure, he just doesn't come off that smart, he just set’s up a bunch of ambushes and that’s about it.

Like the first movie, Game of Shadows manages to take a character with a lot of baggage and manages to do something fun and original. If it had even more Steampunk and was not called Sherlock Holmes it could be a totally different movie. Maybe even a better one. That being said, it was good, and I recommend it if you are in the mood for some shooting and explosions with a distinctly British accent.