Movie #5 - Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows

This is almost gone but not quite so here is a quick review.

Sherlock Holmes 2 is a rollicking adventure flick that takes the good bits of the first movie and amplifies them.  You really should have seen the first film before you see this one, otherwise the significance of certain events early in this movie will be lost on you.  In the first movie, the mastermind behind the events was fairly shadowy, but the second movie opens with Sherlock being fairly certain that Professor Moriarty was behind them but has something bigger on the boil.  Some time has passed since the end of the first film and Dr Watson has had a break from his boy pal Holmes and is preparing for his wedding.  However, after turning up to Holmes' residence for the bucks' night, he is drawn, not as reluctantly as his words might suggest, back into the jolly japes and scrapes of Holmes and his mission to find out what Moriarty is up to.

I think I described the first movie as big dumb fun and there is plenty more of it in this second serve.  If anything it's probably even bigger, with a fun set piece around escaping from a train full of goons out to kill our heroes, followed by an even bigger escape through the woods from a weapons factory with more goons and military types in pursuit.  However the dumb has been toned down a bit, with a labyrinthine plot to unravel via carefully laid clues.  Holmes' detection skills are even more impenetrable than in the first movie, so I'll be renting this out again to watch some bits in slow-motion to catch up.  All the tricks from the first movie are back, such as the mystery unravelling flashbacks, slow-mo fight breakdowns before being played at normal speed, and Robert Downey Jr's cheeky portrayal.  New additions to the series have a mixed outcome.  Noomi Rapace (the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) as a gypsy who gets caught up in Moriarty's scheme is okay but doesn't have much to do other than further the plot.  However Jared Harris does an excellent job as Professor Moriarty, now out in the open and coming across as both mad and calmly sane at the same time.

Definitely rent this out (along with the first one if you need to catch up) when it arrives on DVD.  It's fantastic fun.  But don't watch it if you're tired - you'll never keep up with the incredible mind of Sherlock Holmes!