Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

I'm going to keep this post pretty short, and spoiler free.  Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, is probably the best action movie I've seen all year.  It's better than Thor, Captain America, X-Men, etc.  It took everything good about the first film, turned the volume up to 11, and out did it in every way possible.

Let's start with the obvious point here, and talk about Moriarty.  Jared Harris, who some of you might know as Lane Pryce from Mad Men, was phenomenal.  Was he quite as good as Andrew Scott on the current BBC show Sherlock?  Well, that's a tough act to beat, but damned if he doesn't at least come close.  He's intimidating, evil, and is every bit Sherlock Holmes equal and opposite.  There's also a lot of nice little nods to the books, such as his book The Dynamics Of An Asteroid making a few appearances.  He's every bit the villain that you need Moriarty to be in a Holmes movie.

Another new addition to this film is Sherlock Holmes brother, Mycroft, as played by Stephen Fry.  I'm a huge Stephen Fry fan, and had somehow missed that he was going to be in this before seeing it, so his presence was a great treat.  Like most modern things that feature him, it plays up the few bits from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original  stories about him working for the government into him being a full on MI5 agent.  It, unlike most other modern adaptations, also extrapolated from the few lines about the Diogenes Club that he belongs to only allowing men who prefer the company of other men into him being gay, which makes for one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

While we're still on actors, let's talk about the returning leads, Downey, Jr. as Holmes and Law as Watson.  I think they both did a fine job in the first film, even though Law wasn't really given all that much to do.  They are both better in this, by far, and Law has a much more active role.  The chemistry between the two of them is great, and as natural as could be.  I don't want to go too much into this as describing scenes is a little bit too spoilery, but the comedic bits that they do together work wonderfully.

The action scenes in this are breathtaking.  I've seen a lot of people starting to complain about the Zach Snyder pioneered slow it down, speed it up style of action that Guy Ritchie employs in this, and the previous Holmes film, but...I think those people are wrong.  I will take slow motion over the MTV quick cut action that most films shovel out any day of the week.  It makes the scenes easy to follow, exciting, and visually beautiful all at the same time.  I loved the action scenes in this movie so much that picking one of them to talk about here is simply not possible, they were all fantastic.

In conclusion, you should see this movie, for reals.