Review: Sherlock Holmes A Game Of Shadows (12A) (From The Northern Echo)

Film Review: Sherlock Holmes A Game Of Shadows

4:37pm Friday 16th December 2011 in Reviews

Rating: 4/5

THE combination of Lock Stock director Guy Ritchie, quirky actor Robert Downey Jr and great British detective Sherlock Holmes proved an irresistible attraction with audiences, so it didn’t take the detective powers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation to work out that a sequel was on the cards.

And here it is – another playful reworking of the Holmes legend, tarted up with gun battles, fist fights, big sets, even bigger explosions and energetic performances.

At the heart is the bromance between Holmes (Robert Downey Jr) and his sidekick Dr Watson (Jude Law). The former soldier medic may be about to marry Mary (Kelly Reilly), but for him there really is no place like Holmes. Throw them together on top of each other in a railway carriage with Holmes in drag and Watson in peril and you worry for the 12A certificate.

The plot – and there’s a lot of it, all complicated – concerns Holmes’ arch enemy Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) who is planning to spark a war for his own financial reasons. The action takes Holmes through much of Europe with a finale at those falls in Switzerland where Conan Doyle famously killed him off.

Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (the original star of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) turns up as a gipsy and watch out for Stephen Fry, minus his clothes, as Holmes’ equally eccentric brother Mycroft.

Ritchie stamps his trademark stop-go slow-mo on the action scenes while Downey Jr and Law make a perfect couple, part comics and part action heroes. I look forward to seeing what they do with the relationship in the inevitable third instalment.