Movie: Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows
Directed by Guy Ritchie.
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Stephen Frye, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris.
I have so many feelings about this movie that in order to be coherent, I'm going to have to look at one aspect of the movie at a time.
The plot: One of the (few) flaws of the first Holmes installment was the mystery and villain. While almost everything else in the movie was spot-on, the actual diabolical plot turned out to be pretty transparent. This installment remedies this. While the mystery is still, at heart, fairly straight-forward, Moriarty's planning and execution of such a complex scheme with so many moving parts is impressive and, thankfully, worthy of such an iconic nemesis. Because the plot is much more political and clever, the movie itself is a little slower than the first one, though it is in no way less interesting or lacking in action.
In the middle of all the political intrigue, we have two big subplots that really take over by infusing a human element to movie. First we have the upcoming nuptials of Watson, which we saw Holmes balking at in the last movie. In this movie, we don't see him balking so much as resigning himself to a life of loneliness. On the other hand, we see Watson starting to realize that while his life is full, Holmes' life is not. He is Holmes' only friend and that is a hard place to be for any person. Then we have Holmes and Moriarty's mental chess game (and literal chess game at one point). Holmes has finally come up against someone that he cannot wow with his mental prowess. He tries to confront him with his usual brash style and faces a man who is unimpressed and heartless. It is at the moment - when Holmes realizes that Moriarty is not above cutting down everything and everyone in Holmes' life - that we realize this movie is serious business.
We also have plenty of symbolism which was kind of refreshing because the first movie seemed to lack it, and because it is not heavy-handed. There are running symbols throughout the movie, including devil imagery tied up with Moriarty, the fisher and the trout story, and the, of course, chess pieces. These symbols help us to realize that the mystery is not really what we're watching - we are watching Holmes and Moriarty. We are watching Holmes and Watson. Everything else is just caught in their gravity.
