Cinema review: Sherlock Holmes: a game of shadows

Sherlock Holmes versus professor Moriarty.

It’s really impossible not to love Robert Downey Junior. He manages to instill a certain quirkiness, an unfathomable charm, in every role that he takes and his Sherlock Holmes is no exception. A case could be made that is very hard to distinguish between his various characters, that in the end he is just a one note actor but really who cares when he plays that role so wonderfully?

Also Jude Law is back as a very action oriented Watson and the easy chemistry between the two leads is still as good as the last time, maybe even better. No Rachel McAdams sadly, only a cameo for her with the token female role taken by an underutilized Noomi Rapace.

What really falls flat is the plot. It is all about the nefarious plans of professor Moriarty, played perfectly by Jared Harris of Mad Men fame, but while we are told all the time that he is incredibly intelligent, the equal on the opposite side of Holmes, we don’t really see it. The writers fell in a very old logical trap which is: When you’re trying to depict something as very smart you can make it very intelligent and complicated but then you risk leaving the audience confused, or you can pretend that it’s all extremely complicated and then make it dumb. You can guess what the filmmaker’s choice was.

But then a smart plot is not really that important in a big blockbuster, you can even go without a plot at all (I’m looking at you Transformers!), and here Ritchie manages to make it work thanks to his gift for snappy dialogues, with some help from Downey Junior I’m sure, crazy action, Sherlock vision is back, and good framing.

I got one last gripe though. I understand that there is an homosexual subtext in Holmes and Watson partnership and that even if it wasn’t such a big deal in Doyle time it is now but really Ritchie and co. are concentrating too much on it. The whole relationship drama between the two starts because Watson leaves Holmes for a woman, OK it’s fine, but then we have Holmes in drag practically hugging Watson after throwing said women out of a running train and in the end we even have Holmes asking Watson out for a dance. Now nothing against a relationship like this, of course, just saying that it’s possible to be a little bit more subtle, that’s way they call it subtext.

Anyway very fun stuff, a must see.