Movie Review - “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”

By Bob Garver

Did you know the title char­ac­ter of the tele­vi­sion show “House” is based on Sher­lock Holmes? Played by Hugh Lau­rie, House is a bril­liant solver of mys­ter­ies who has an anti­so­cial per­son­al­ity, a drug prob­lem, and a num­ber of annoy­ing per­sonal traits. It’s no acci­dent, we’re sup­posed to be see­ing how the great­est mind in lit­er­a­ture would oper­ate in today’s society.

Holmes him­self is por­trayed basi­cally the same way by Robert Downey Jr., both in 2009’s “Sher­lock Holmes” and now in “A Game of Shad­ows.” The por­tray­als are so sim­i­lar that my mother saw the trailer for the orig­i­nal and asked if the actor was the one from “House” despite not know­ing the delib­er­ate con­nec­tion. The actors don’t look very much alike, they just take the same approach to the character.

I bring up the “House” com­par­i­son because the show has ren­dered the films moot. Why make a big to-do about going to a see a movie when you get to see the same char­ac­ter in 24 new adven­tures a year from the com­fort of your liv­ing room (not to men­tion for free)? About the only thing the films do to dis­tance them­selves from the show is set the sto­ries in Vic­to­rian Lon­don. The most notable unique ele­ments are fancy dress, cob­ble­stone streets, and no cell phones. This is sup­posed to give the film an “authen­tic” look rem­i­nis­cent of the books, but all the cam­era tricks and spe­cial effects take away from the clas­si­cal feel.

For this film, Holmes takes on his lit­er­ary arch neme­sis, Pro­fes­sor James Mori­arty (Jared Har­ris). We are con­stantly told of what a sharp intel­lec­tual Mori­arty is and how he’s a per­fect men­tal match for Holmes, but frankly I’m not con­vinced. Hav­ing the resources to carry out an evil scheme (in this case egging on World War I so he can profit from the sale of weapons) doesn’t make him smart, it just makes him rich and pow­er­ful. And he makes the ever-stupid vil­lain mis­take of brag­ging about his plans to Holmes so our hero can stop him just in time. I think the mes­sage we’re sup­posed to take away from these scenes is that Mori­arty is the orig­i­nal Bond villain.

Holmes is joined by his ever-faithful side­kick Wat­son (Jude Law). Holmes loves to annoy Wat­son, and Wat­son tol­er­ates it because he sees it as some kind of sign of affec­tion. Holmes puts poor Wat­son in dan­ger just so he can earn his grat­i­tude when he saves him. Wat­son is get­ting mar­ried, but the film still likes to be child­ish and tease that the two are more than just friends. Other char­ac­ters include Noomi Rapace as a gypsy girl whose brother may be mixed up with Mori­arty and Stephen Fry (an com­edy part­ner of Hugh Lau­rie) as Holmes’s brother.

As with the orig­i­nal “Sher­lock Holmes”, “A Game of Shad­ows” has lit­tle to make it inter­est­ing or mem­o­rable. I’ll admit that the film does have one cute trick where Holmes imag­ines how an entire fight sequence will play out before it hap­pens, usu­ally in defi­ance of Holmes’s strat­egy. Oth­er­wise it’s an action movie we’ve seen a thou­sand times before. I have no doubt that the char­ac­ter of Sher­lock Holmes can still be enjoyed, pro­vided you can find an older film or bet­ter yet, some of the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But this surly ver­sion of Holmes, while fit­ting in very well on tele­vi­sion in “House,” has no place at the theater.

Two Stars out of Five — Sher­lock Holmes: A Game of Shad­ows” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of vio­lence and action and some drug mate­r­ial. Its run­ning time is 129 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Dec 21 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.