Climbing Outside A Train Archives - Sean Kelly On Movies

This has definitely been a very busy movie-watching weekend for me, with this being my third film in three days. You can partially blame the fact that this is the time of the year where studios release all their biggest films for the holiday rush. Anyways, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is second of Guy Ritchie's Holmes films starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. It is a very loose adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Final Problem, which pitted Holmes against his greatest nemesis - Professor James Moriarty (Man Men's Jared Harris). Moriarty is the only person able to match Holmes intellectually and the title of the film is in reference to the metaphorical chess game they play with each other. Rounding out the cast of the film is Stephen Fry as Holmes' brother Mycroft and Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo) makes her English-language debut as the gypsy Simza Heron. For all intents and purposes, this film is more of the same, except on a much larger scale. This film is a little less about solving a mystery and more about stopping Moriarty's plot to start a war. As such, there is probably a little more emphasis on action in this one than in the last. Some might be critical of Ritchie's beefing up of the action in his film version of Conan Doyle's famous character, but Downey's charisma as the titular makes it all worth it. Overall, while there are probably better interpretations of the character in existence, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was still an entertaining film. 8/10