Sherlock Holmes goes over the top

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, and Kelly Reilly
Director: Guy Ritchie
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Downey and Law)track and fight anarchists and Holmes' nemesis Professor Moriarity (Harris) across Europe in a desperate bid to stop them from triggering war on a global scale.

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" picks up where the Downey and Law's first outing as Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary characters left off and carries forward along the trajectory of that first movie--the action is wilder and well over the top, and the scope of what's at stake if Moriarity bests Holmes has likewise been ratcheted up. Basically, if you hated the first movie because you felt it wasn't "Sherlock Holmes", you're going to hate this one.

Me, I hated the first movie, because director Guy Richie didn't seem able to tell a story, which is odd because he seemed pretty good at it with his early films like "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels". And then there was the moronic way he and the script-writers chose to establish Holmes' prowess as a boxer and thus showed Holmes to be a bit of dolt at the same time--which he possessed in the Doyle stories, as those who paid attention to them rather than old Universal Pictures films or British TV shows would know--and the painful overuse of slow motion action sequences.

While Richie still made an obnoxious overuse of both slow motion and still-frame shots during action sequences, his story-telling was a little less muddled because the story really wasn't all that complicated and he didn't inadvertently paint Holmes as an idiot by having him engage in self-destructive behaviors beyond what we're used to from the Doyle stories and other films.

The acting was serviceable all around, and neither Holmes nor Watson were the exclusive butt of jokes; like the first Downey/Law pairing, one can actually understand why Holmes keeps Watson around... although I did find myself wondering sometimes why Watson puts up with Holmes. The comedy in the film was balanced nicely with action sequences, and it a very entertaining movie over all.

It is, however, an action film and not a mystery movie. There is really no mystery that Holmes is trying to unravel, but he is instead trying to outmaneuver Moriarty and the evil genius' master plan. The exact nature of that plan is hidden for a time, but it's not really relevant what Moriarity is up to when it comes right down to it. All in all, it's a film that is probably more entertaining if you watch it with the attitude you might watch a Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle, or maybe a James Bond movie.

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" is a rare sequel that's better than the film it follows. But if you want "classic Holmes", you're better off with almost any of the Holmes' films I've written about here.

'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is great tribute to 1930s pulp adventures

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Starring: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie
Director: Kerry Conran
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

It's the 1930s, and America is being menaced by flying giant robots of mysterious origins. When big city ace reporter Polly Perkins (Paltrow) finds herself on the trail of a story that might blow the lid of the secrets of the robots, she is brought back in contact with her old flame, Joe Sullivan (Law), also knows as the mercenary pilot Sky Captain. Together, they must stop the robot attacks before a mad scientist implements his apocalyptic designs on the entire world.

"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a fun movie if you enjoy comic books and light-hearted tales of high adventure. It's a trendmendous movie if you love the old adventure B-movies and serials, like "Bulldog Drummond" and "Flash Gordon" and even "The Shadow Creeps". It's a movie you positively have to see if you happen to have even the slightest effection for any of the above, because this movie captures the very best of all of those and produces a fantastic fantasy version of 1930s America where wise-cracking beat reporters and brave-hearted private armies stand ready to defend the helpless people of the world against mad scientists and fascist menaces.

"Sky Captain" is also a beautiful movie to look at. The visuals are great and the sets (particularly those that are actually backdrops or computer graphics) are gorgeous, and the art-deco world with its "retro" futuristic technology is one that lovers of old-time adventure flicks will have a great time getting lost in. The flying aircraft carrier of the Royal British Navy that our heroes rendezvous with at one point, as well as the lair of the movie's bad guy, are particularly fabulous. The best part of the film's look was the way they captured the "fakeness" of the old-time movies... the cityscapes, the giant robots, the planes, even many of the buildings the characters spend time in, LOOK like models, just as they did in the movies that inspired this one. But it's not "fake" in a bad or cheesy way, it's "fake" in the way it absolutely needs to be if the feel of the movie is to be right.

The same is true of the acting in the film as well. The style of performances, particularly those of Paltrow and Angelina Jolie (who appears as a British military officer in a small but fun role), are also in line with the the acting traditions of the 30s and 40s. Law doesn't quite manage to pull it off, but he's really the only one out of all the players who disappoints; he isn't BAD in his part, he just isn't quite in step with the feel of the rest of the film.

Now, for all my gushing about the look of the movie and the performances of the actors, I do have to fault "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" for not having enough of a script to quite carry the film. At several times during the film, I found myself wishing for a bit more characterizations of Polly, Joe, and even a few of the minor characters; they always managed to work it in during the oldies, so why not here? The "big reveal" about the nature of the threat was also a bit disappointing to me, and I would have liked to have seen that whole climactic sequence on the "secret island" be a bit more coherent and fleshed-out than it turned out to be.

Despite its weak points, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" is a movie that I highly recommend, and it's one that's a permanent part of my movie collection.

Sherlock Holmes as action hero

Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams, Mark Stone, Eddie Marsan, William Houston and Kelly Reilly
Director: Guy Ritchie
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Sherlock Holmes (Downey) and his sometimes-reluctant colleague Dr. Watson (Law) most solve the mystery of a Satanist (Stone) who has seemingly returned from the dead to continue a killing spree. Meanwhile, Holmes old adversary and lover Irene Adler (McAdams) has reappeared on the scene with a mysterious agenda of her own.


The most famous of all consulting detectives gets the big budget, CGI-generated "stunts" action movie treatment in a film with actors who give far better performances than this flabby movie probably deserved.

Some reviewers have been upset by the "action movie" feel this film has, even commenting that Holmes shouldn't be an action hero. I don't quite agree with that sentiment, as Holmes always seemed like a man of action and quite willing to resort to violence when necessary. What annoys me is the pointlessness of much of the action and some of the stupidity of it.

I don't know whether it's the gigantic budget he had to work with here, or whether he's devolved as a director over the past ten years, but Guy Ritchie seemed to have a far better sense for how to make an exciting movie when he did "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" in the late 1990s.

The flow of the movie, and therefore the attention to the viewer, is repeatedly disrupted by pointless side treks and plot detours, such as a long sequence with Holmes in a boxing match (a very stupid thing for a genius like Holmes to engage in, even if he is a thrill-seeker), or one where he is tricked by Irene Adler and ends up handcuffed and naked in bed (an scene mostly there for a single feeble gag). These irrelevancies might not be so bad if they added some definition to the characters, but the traits shown in these scenes are already introduced and reinforced in other far more relevant and important scenes, making the filler material like the above-mentioned sequences that much more annoying and boring. The end result is that the film has a flabby, drawn-out feeling to it.

Then there's the asinine slow-motion and absolutely annoying jerky/blurry camera work during the action scenes. It's not artistic, it doesn't enhance the suspense... it's just irritating and stupid.

The script is also not all it could have been. I've already mentioned pointless scenes, but a far bigger problem is the case that Holmes is working on. It's so much that he is squaring off against what seems to be a supernatural menace (even if that is more in keeping with Doyle's non-Holmes tales than this one) it's that the bad guys are of the "trying to take over the world" variety. What's next for Holmes at this point? Battling Professor Moriarty after he teams up with Ming the Merciless to conquer the Universe? A smaller, perhaps even more petty, motivation for the villains would have been far more suitable.

It's too bad this film wasn't helmed by a more competent director and based on a more solid script, because the approach taken by both the script and the actors to the characters of Holmes and Watson feels very much in keeping with the stories from which they originally sprang. While the nature of the adventure is pretty far removed from anything Doyle included in the Holmes stories, but Downey and Law portray a Holmes and a Watson that I think Doyle probably would have appreciated. They are far better than the celebrated team of Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce, slightly better than Jeremy Brett & Edward Hardwicke, and standing nearly equal with my favorite on-screen Holmes & Watson team of Peter Cushing & Andre Morrell.


All in all, file this Holmes version with the Hammer "The Hound of the Baskervilles" starring Cushing and Morrell. It gets the characters right, it's very entertaining, but the storyline is a bit far from Conan Doyle. Not as far as some of the Basil Rathbone films, but pretty far nonetheless.