Only two years ago, the first of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films came out, a cleverly reimagined portrayal of Holmes that was less aloof, detached, robot-like genius with an occasional opium habit and more drug-addled rock star of the detective world who stumbles from case to case causing problems for all around him and cursed with the ability to make stunning insights based on tiny observations. Rather than the unmemorable Blackwood of the first film, this one seems Holmes pitted against his nemesis Moriarty, as the original cliffhanger hinted it would. This of course made for a much more interesting cat-and-mouse game, but not only is there a worry now that this amusingly alternative version of Holmes will become the mainstream (making me long for the original version to make a return), but there was also the problem of giving Moriarty a motive that would seem intriguing and personal. Beyond a vendetta against Watson established purely because Holmes tried to avert it, there’s a supposed twist in that what Moriarty is really after is to start a large-scale war which will result in huge profits for him, because he has cornered the market in weaponry and other industries associated with warfare. It’s such an overused idea that it has its own TV Tropes page – ‘War for Fun and Profit’, and the idea was cliché in Star Trek, cliché in Gundam Wing, and it’s cliché here.
Still, there wherefores are peripheral, and it’s the stylistic delivery that works here. It’s by turns funny (that poor dog!), visually striking (the slow motion sequences) and clever (it’s not what the disguised ambassador does but what he does not do that gives him away). There’s a good mixture of action, comedy and pathos and the ending is satisfactory.
There’s also the appearance of Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes, an excellent foil to his brother and a bit of casting that I’m sure will evoke much commentary about the irony of Fry playing Mycroft to an American acting as the British Holmes while his long-time comedy partner who is British plays a famed American TV character based on Holmes, so I won’t need to add much to it here. It also reunites him with his Wilde co-star Law. On the other hand, having read about all his various body issues and extreme lack of confidence in The Fry Chronicles, I was mostly wondering about the psychological impact of the nude scene he had on the actor, rather than having the intended reaction of ‘Look, an inappropriately naked and unsightly man, how funny.’ But then, I’ve always had hang-ups about on-screen nudity, even wit nothing revealed.
And I also had problems with both the larger plot and the details. I could accept they would infiltrate Moriarty’s arms base when they don’t really need to in order to search for Rene, but after that there seems a great leap. They know Rene is working for Moriarty, but I cannot understand how Holmes deduced that the disguised ambassador had to be him. Why could it not have been one of numerous men working for Moriarty rather than Rene himself? It wasn’t made clear.
Plus lots of details were stretched, or relied on coincidence. Would Moriarty really leave the book that was his cipher in plain view when Holmes was visiting? Could he really rely on Holmes drawing the wrong conclusion when he went to the Opera for my (everyone’s?) favourite part of Don Giovanni? Did they really have to have their final confrontation over a game of chess, that most laboured of images?
Fun, but certainly not without its flaws.
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