Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
This one may actually be pretty easy... frustratingly easy... mainly because I barely remember a damn thing that happened in it. The plot? Barely registers. It's basically Holmes versus Professor Moriarty- the legendary villain from Doyle's The Final Problem Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes must thwart Moriarty who's hoping to start World War I because he stands to benefit as a weapons dealer of sorts. Or something along those lines. Look, how good can a movie be if you barely remember it a month later?
Actually, I do remember liking it a fair amount. This is mostly due to its inclusion of many of the elements that worked from the first Holmes movie. The witty banter and camaraderie between Robert Downey, Jr's Holmes and Jude Law's Watson. In this effort they director Guy Ritchie and company have seemed to ramp up Holmes' insufferable-ness and Watson's exasperation. But they do stick to a formula known to have worked, and I remember thinking that it was pretty good- except when they attempted to clone elements of the first movie and shove them in the second, whether they fit or not. Don't ask for specifics here- it's just a vague feeling. In the end, I suppose, it was fun enough. Or so I remember thinking. Not quite as fresh as the first go around, but a worthy diversion.
Another thing that I do distinctly remember liking about A Game of Shadows was the inclusion of Moriarty as an earnest foil for Holmes. He's every bit Holmes' intellectual equal. And something of an evil genius. And as I wrote way back in my review of G.I. Joe there just aren't enough true evil geniuses in the movies anymore. Too often you see archenemies exploiting each other's known weaknesses. Rarely do you see them match up so evenly in their strongest quality. Unless that quality is brute strength. You see that often enough- that tends to boil down to who has the bigger heart. Usually the good guy. Here, if you weren't so certain that the franchise was too bankable not to have a third installment, you'd really begin to wonder if Holmes had met his match. It's nice to have a worthy opponent for our screen heroes to battle and Moriarty was definitely an upgrade over Mark Strong's Lord Blackwood. (Though it's tough for me to dump on go-to baddie Mark Strong).
In the end, though, I have to down-grade the movie for one of the things I most vividly remembered about it: it looked terrible. All gray and drab and blanched out for the most part. It looked depressing and dirty. Sure there were some interesting sequences but I think Ritchie took it way too far towards the gritty end of the spectrum. Certainly farther than it needed to go. And maybe that's why I have such trouble remembering it. It just wasn't visually impressive. Nothing to wow me. And maybe I'm just instinctively shutting out all the drabness. I don't know. But I do remember clearly being unimpressed with the look of the film.
Really though, how highly can I rate a movie that is only vaguely memorable...and even then what is memorable about it is nearly evenly split between positive and negative aspects? Clearly, this isn't an A-range movie... but then I do remember walking out of the theater thinking, "Not as good as the first, but really not bad either... just wish it didn't look so bad." Guess I'll have to go with my gut...
Grade: B+
No comments:
Post a Comment