Tally-ho what, we love each other and we're
not going to hide it anymore
dir: Guy Ritchie
Mr Ritchie, is there something you’re trying to tell us? Your last three films have had, shall we say, a curious subtext considering the material (all violent action-y crime capers), and yet now, in the sequel to your inexplicably successful Sherlock Holmes flick, that subtext has now just become text. Congratulations? Are you making progress? Are you getting somewhere with your, um, feelings towards other men?
Long have people joked or slyly nudge nudged and wink winked over the potential for the fictional sleuthing characters of Holmes and Watson to have been, shall we say, better than the best of friends and companions. The last flick with Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law as the principles humorously alluded to it in a plethora of ways. In this one, it’s flat out right up there on the screen. Holmes is jealously needling Watson over whether he’d rather be spending time with him or his wife on their honeymoon, he’s dressing up in drag whenever he can, compelling Watson to lay down with him. And, just before the film’s climax, at some diplomatic ball at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, they even dance a loving waltz together. And no-one bats an eyelid. Which is progress, of a sort.
At the conclusion of their dance, Holmes jealously says to Watson, “Who taught you to dance like that?”
You know what’s coming, don’t you? Watson whispers lovingly to him, “You did.”
Love, oh careless love.
Holmes pursues, through this shadowy game of a story, his greatest nemesis, his only worthy adversary, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), who seems to be operating from the middle of a very complicated web. From there, or from Oxford, at least, he pulls the threads connecting countless people, with waves of his malign influence expanding across a Europe which he is priming for war. The year is 1891, so I guess he just can’t wait for 1914 to start his hoarding, profiteering and the selling of weapons to both sides of the conflict.
Holmes, as played by Downey Jnr, is just as nervy, just as dishevelled as in the previous flick, though he’s possibly even more Aspergers-like in this instalment. This characterisation rankles with a fair few people, and I’m not going to defend it. It’s a take on the character that fans, devotees of the many renditions of the character or of Arthur Conan Doyle find harder to stomach than the general public, methinks. The thing is, though, whether it is or isn't a worthy characterisation, the question for us should be whether we’re entertained by it or not.
It’s a hard question for me to answer. It’s impossible for me to see the character beyond Downey Jnr’s array of tics and affectations, in that this character feels more artificial than his suit of super armour in the Iron Man flicks.
But I still enjoyed it, mostly. The bigger problem / issue is that the studio or Guy Ritchie feel almost afraid to have more than two or three minutes go by without either a brawl, a shootout or an explosion occur, because they are terrified of the audience falling asleep, and then waking up in a rage to send out tweets saying that the flick is an abomination of boredom.
That kind of modus operandi makes more sense to me when you're making a Mission Impossible flick, less so when you're talking about the adventures of two chaps in the 1890s.
And the thing is, and I probably said it about the first one, too, that when I think of Watson and Holmes solving crimes and getting into dangerous scrapes, I don’t really think of it as an action fest. It’s meant to be more of a mystery, at best a thriller, and yet there’s a long sequence given over from footage that wouldn’t have been completely out of place if inserted into the Omaha Beach landing at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.
Of course, it only could have happened had Speilbergo consented to have an abundance of gypsies in one of his films, which we know he’d never do, considering how little he thinks of them.
There are a lot of gypsies in this flick, but the only one who matters is the fearsome presence of Simza (Noomi Rapace). You may know her better as the ‘original’ Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish versions of the Dragon with the Girl Tattoo on Fire Kicking a Hornet’s Nest movies. Her presence here indicates that Hollywood has come calling, and she can look forward to a few years in the limelight making serious bank before she has to go back to Sweden in ignominy and shame.
In the same week I’ve seen the other main actor from those movies in another major Hollywood release, being Michael Nyqvist who played the journalist in those Swedish potboilers, as the villain in Ghost Protocol, so it’s good to see the Swedes finally being rewarded for their Swedishness.
Simza is some gypsy fortune-teller, but has a far more important role to play, that being someone who can help Holmes and Watson out along the breadcrumb trail and wear a funny hat at the same time. Crucial, utterly crucial to the film. But she’s not a token love interest, because that wouldn’t make sense in a flick dedicated to man love anyway.
She and Holmes share a delirious fight sequence with a Cossack assassin that looks like it was lifted straight out of a Hong Kong flick, and is done mostly for laughs rather than anything else. Even more deliciously, this is all occurring at a buck’s night for Watson which Holmes is meant to have organised, but does everything to sabotage, and it’s not because of the allure of the gypsy’s internal mysteries.
No, Holmes doesn’t want to do the nasty with a gypsy, he’s only interested in her connection to a pawn being used by Moriarty in his dastardly schemes, seeing as he seems to be manipulating anarchist groups to do his dirty work, often without them knowing whose bidding they’re doing.
In a very early scene, in fact the one in which we’re introduced to Moriarty, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams returning for a thankless few minutes of work), meets with the man whose bidding she carries out. In an expression of his power, or influence, though they sit in a crowded tea room in public, once one of Moriarty’s henchmen taps his glass with a spoon three times, a hundred people get up and leave post haste.
The scene stayed with me for a while, because though it looked impressive, and was meant to give Irene that “oh shit, I’m totally fucked” feeling, it doesn’t make any sense at all, in this or any other universe. If Moriarty is a genius who operates from the shadows, who no-one except his closest henchman and Sherlock Holmes know is the secret criminal mastermind of Europe, then why would all the people in the tea rooms be afraid of him, since they wouldn’t know who he is in order to be afraid of him. And even if they all worked for him, if hundreds of people know who he is enough to be afraid of him, then how is he the secret criminal mastermind etc etc etc?
I know, I know, sometimes I can’t help the obnoxious Comic-Book Guy part of my personality coming to the fore. These flicks are like that, though. If you’re going to quibble, if you’re going to think occasionally “wait a second, how different is this from that stupid League of Extraordinary Gentlemen flick that came out a while back?”, if you’re not going to come along for the ride, then you’re going to be unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road. If, on the other hand, you just accept that everyone involved is a genius, and that they know what they’re doing, then you’ll have an explosive ball.
I guess it works okay as an action film. A lot of stuff blows up, there are a lot of those brawls where Holmes runs through for our benefit what he’s going to do before he does it, though it’s refined a bit since the last flick. It’s very reliant on special effects and digital trickery, far more so than you’d think that a Sherlock Holmes story would require, but I guess it enhances the action and makes everything look even more dangerous and explodable than you ever imagined.
I can’t quibble with the way it’s all put together, because having retroactive explanations as to how or why Holmes has saved the day by doing something we didn’t realise or see a long time ago is par for the course. If I accepted it in the last film, then I guess I’m obligated by law to accept it now. And the look of the flick, and the way it’s put together is superior, or at least feels superior to the first flick. All of the participants seem like they’re comfortable with what they’re doing, and I hope they had fun doing so. It’s not uncommon for the Watson character to often be more relatable than the Holmes character in any of these renditions of the story, but Jude Law does pretty well here, getting many opportunities to shine, and, in fact, save the day.
Jared Harris is pretty neat as Moriarty. He manages to convey that Olympian distance / disdain for humanity concept, aligned with a quiet but lethal menace. He has a way of smiling which implies his next victim really doesn’t realise in just how much trouble they really are. Of course, in a flick where two geniuses are meant to be squaring off, Moriarty is only as far ahead of Holmes as the story requires, until he isn’t anymore, and then we’re left wondering how such a supergenius could be undone so easily. The manner in which their final battle is conveyed is brilliant, with the complete choreographing of what they could both do in a fight being played out for our benefit, because clearly he’d be able what Holmes can do fight-wise if he’s a supergenius as well? It’s funny, and it makes Holmes’ solution make a lot more sense.
Steven Fry gets a nice turn as Sherlock’s older, even more capable brother Mycroft, but he’s mostly used for comic relief, and not as an example of what a Holmes with an even more advanced intellect but overwhelming laziness would be capable of. He gets a few nice lines, gets an awesome nude scene, and earns a pretty penny in case he ever picks up his cocaine habit again.
Speaking of which, the medical benefits of cocaine play a crucial part in the plot, even so far as practically bringing a character back from the dead. Talk about glamourising Class A and therefore very expensive drugs. Parents groups should be outraged, I tells ya.
Look, I enjoyed it somewhat, it’s on a par with the first if not better, so that should be your benchmark. It’s truly more of the same, delivered at a rollicking speed, with ‘splosions aplenty, so you should all be happy with it.
But the next one does need to have transforming clockwork robots and steampowered mobile phones if it’s going to make any sense at all.
7 cries of “just go on your bloody honeymoon already with your lovely redhead, Watson, before Holmes finds another way to cockblock you” out of 10
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“They're dangerous at both ends and... crafty in the middle. Why would I want anything with a mind of its own bobbing about between my legs?” – yes, women can be very dangerous, old chap – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
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