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.

'Zodiac' is too long, but still worth the time

Zodiac (2007)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, Anthony Edwards, Chloë Sevigny, Elias Koteas, and John Carroll Lynch
Director: David Fincher
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A mysterious killer taunts the police and the press with letters while remaining unknown and uncatchable. "Zodiac" tells the story of three men (Downey, Gyllenhaal, and Ruffalo) whose lives were altered and consumed by their attempts to unmask the killer. The tagline here-- "There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer"--is one of the more apt ones to ever be applied to a film.


Based on real-life events, "Zodiac" is a dialogue-driven thriller that keeps a downbeat, tense mood--accented by brief horror sequences as Zodiac commits his murders or moments such as when cartoonist-turned-amateur-slueth Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) comes face to face with a man he comes to believe is the Zodiac himself--as it grinds through its nearly three hour running time. While the fillm is entirely too long, it is nonetheless well put together with excellent performances by every member of the cast. (I am mildly troubled by the fact there's a two disk director's cut of this film available. It already began to feel tortourously long as the Zodiac investigation ran around in a swamp of dead ends and I was about ready to give up on it just when Graysmith finally started putting some pieces together and the movie picked up its pace as he zeroed in on the identity of the Zodiac Killer. I shudder to imagine how dull an even longer version of this movie must be.)

"Zodiac" is worth seeing, particularly if you enjoy true-to-life police procedurals and low-key thrillers, but be aware that you'll probably have to set aside an entire evening to do so. I'd be prone to stay away from the extended director's cut, but I admit to not having seen it.)

One of the best movies of 2000s

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2005)
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan
Director: Shane Black
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

In "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," petty thief Harry (Downey) is whisked away to Hollywood when a casting director decides he'll be perfect to play a detective in an upcoming movie. Here, he meets homosexual private detective "Gay" Perry (Kilmer) and, through a chance encounter, is reunited with childhood friend and unfulfilled dream-girl Harmony (Monaghan). The trio soon find themselves (despite their best efforts not to be) involved with mysteries, murders, and mayhem so bizarre that it's as though they've stepped into a classic pulp dime store mystery novel.


"Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" manages to be both a black comedy and a modern take on "film noir," as our reluctant heroes try to sort out the evermore complicated and deadly mystery they have been drawn into. The humor is derived from extremely witty patter that is delivered with great skill by Downey and Kilmer, and from the movie's playful fourth-wall approach to the ever-present narrator so common in this type of film. (More than once, the narrator--Harry--stops the film and comments that he left something and then goes on hilarious, self-deprecating rants about narration, storytelling, and how bad he is at both.) Laughs are also generated by the way the film turns several of the genre's conventions on its head, prime among these being that the hardboiled detective is openly gay.

This movie is fantastic not only because every actor is at the top of their game for every moment they spend on screen, but also because the film manages to keep its tense mystery plot going while being playful with the artifact that is a movie and the narration device. Even the digs at the "typical Hollywood happy ending" that the film gets in at the end, and the final wrap-up by the narrator are executed so flawlessly that they actually work!

Pay attention, all you filmmakers who think you're making clever suspense movies or clever comedies about movie-making and Hollywood... "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" is an incredibly well-done example of how to do both.

Psychic madman stalks innocent family

In Dreams (1999)
Starring: Annette Bening, Aiden Quinn, Paul Guilfoyle, Stephen Rea, Katie Sagona and Robert Downey, Jr.
Director: Neil Jordan
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Claire (Bening) finds herself connected psychically to a madman (Downey) who starts targeting her family for reasons only he understands. Will she able to convince anyone that she isn't crazy before he kills everyone she loves, including Claire herself?


"In Dreams" is an interesting supernatural thriller where the film takes its time revealing whether the main character is psychic, telepathically linked with a serial killer, or just plain crazy. That aspect of the film is very well done. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is dragged down by over-acting and poorly developed story elements.

Take for example the psychiatrist that plays a key role in getting Claire committed to a mental hospital. It's one thing to for him to do so initially, but why does it take him and the orderlies a couple of days to notice the carvings on the wall of Claire's cell, carvings that she could not have made? Well... no reason other than some time needed to pass for plot reasons. And it really is too much of a coincidence that Claire just happened to be placed in the same cell that her "psychic twin" had inhabited a decade or so earlier.

Too much of the movie's story relies on such far-feteched coincidences to be fully effective. If just a little more care and effort had been put into the script and if Annette Bening had dailed back the histronics and melodrama just a tad, this could have been an excellent little chiller. It's still entertaining--Robert Downey, Jr. makes a great madman and his final fate is one that will cause most viewers to chuckle evilly to themselves--but there are too many moments where the attentive viewer will be annoyed by the sloppy story. (Actually, even the ending, which I am fond of, is a bit underdeveloped.)

This flawed film is worth checking out if you notice it showing on TV, but it's not worth going out of your way for. It has some great and creepy moments and it has a neat ending, but those aren't enough to save it.

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.