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Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows Review
So went to see Sherlock finally! Thoughts on it are under the cut; spoiler warning, naturally.
As the first movie suggested, the sequel was bound to focus entirely on Professor Moriarty. I will make an unpopular confession, that is I don't really enjoy the Moriarty stories as well as I do the others. To me, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was trying to create the perfect arch nemesis, but as much as I adore the man, I felt he relied much too heavily on talking about how brilliant he was without showing enough of it. He may be the Napoleon of Crime, but because he was so brilliant at it, we never got to see this true mastermind at work; they always vaguely disappointed me.
Still, I went with high hopes, since I enjoyed the first movie so much.
The most bothersome thing, which I will get out of the way immediately, was the overuse of stylistic shots. The deductions being slowed down were absolutely amazing in the first, because not only did we get to see all the tiny things in detail and how Sherlock added them all up, but it was also meant to convey that Sherlock's mind registered and pieced together all these facts so incredibly fast.
In this movie, we got to see the fight scenes and deductions slowed down, but they also felt it necessary to slow down the action scenes. One scene in particular seemed to drag on forever needlessly; not only was it slowed down to show each painstaking detail of loading a gun, checking the gauges, the soldier's faces, but it was just so completely useless. For one, it didn't even make sense to use the gun within the plot, but then to linger on it so lovingly was just annoying.
There were also scenes that were slowed down simply to "show emotion", except it ended up sucking most of the emotion out of the scene and just led to showing Jude Law looking uncomfortable and blank.
Let's talk about the plot, then.
The first amazed me because it was a new story. It was done fantastically well. I am a fan of the original stories, and loved the inclusion of tiny little details and lines from the books, while never having the plot ruined because I had "read that one". This one, the plot was...
Well, Scooby-Dooish, honestly.
It was just incredibly cliche. Moriarty is a simple war profiteer? And the ambassador angle was little more than a man in the mask.
It felt disappointing, as Moriarty so often does, because the problem with building up an arch nemesis so much is that you can never live up to the audience's expectations.
The "creating tension to start a war" has been used and used again, and it wasn't even done particularly well here. For one, there was never the "big reveal". One of the things I loved about the first one was never being able to guess the ending. I wavered between, "Surely they're not... are they going to do a supernatural one? No..." and the big reveal going throughout the entire movie to show how it was done is such an intrinsic part of the mystery, and Sherlock Holmes' mysteries especially. It's the sense that we've been given all the pieces, but only the great detective himself could put them all together.
This one had no such reveal, but constantly revealed facts the entire time.
There was no big mystery to solve, it was just... chasing down new leads, honestly.
It just didn't have the same "Aha!" moment that you want from a mystery movie.
It may sound like I didn't like the movie, which isn't true. Stephen Fry as Mycroft was brilliant, the women characters were astounding and my feminist side was jumping for joy, the dialogue was clever, and overall, I enjoyed it.
I just wouldn't say it's as good as the first.
As the first movie suggested, the sequel was bound to focus entirely on Professor Moriarty. I will make an unpopular confession, that is I don't really enjoy the Moriarty stories as well as I do the others. To me, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was trying to create the perfect arch nemesis, but as much as I adore the man, I felt he relied much too heavily on talking about how brilliant he was without showing enough of it. He may be the Napoleon of Crime, but because he was so brilliant at it, we never got to see this true mastermind at work; they always vaguely disappointed me.
Still, I went with high hopes, since I enjoyed the first movie so much.
The most bothersome thing, which I will get out of the way immediately, was the overuse of stylistic shots. The deductions being slowed down were absolutely amazing in the first, because not only did we get to see all the tiny things in detail and how Sherlock added them all up, but it was also meant to convey that Sherlock's mind registered and pieced together all these facts so incredibly fast.
In this movie, we got to see the fight scenes and deductions slowed down, but they also felt it necessary to slow down the action scenes. One scene in particular seemed to drag on forever needlessly; not only was it slowed down to show each painstaking detail of loading a gun, checking the gauges, the soldier's faces, but it was just so completely useless. For one, it didn't even make sense to use the gun within the plot, but then to linger on it so lovingly was just annoying.
There were also scenes that were slowed down simply to "show emotion", except it ended up sucking most of the emotion out of the scene and just led to showing Jude Law looking uncomfortable and blank.
Let's talk about the plot, then.
The first amazed me because it was a new story. It was done fantastically well. I am a fan of the original stories, and loved the inclusion of tiny little details and lines from the books, while never having the plot ruined because I had "read that one". This one, the plot was...
Well, Scooby-Dooish, honestly.
It was just incredibly cliche. Moriarty is a simple war profiteer? And the ambassador angle was little more than a man in the mask.
It felt disappointing, as Moriarty so often does, because the problem with building up an arch nemesis so much is that you can never live up to the audience's expectations.
The "creating tension to start a war" has been used and used again, and it wasn't even done particularly well here. For one, there was never the "big reveal". One of the things I loved about the first one was never being able to guess the ending. I wavered between, "Surely they're not... are they going to do a supernatural one? No..." and the big reveal going throughout the entire movie to show how it was done is such an intrinsic part of the mystery, and Sherlock Holmes' mysteries especially. It's the sense that we've been given all the pieces, but only the great detective himself could put them all together.
This one had no such reveal, but constantly revealed facts the entire time.
There was no big mystery to solve, it was just... chasing down new leads, honestly.
It just didn't have the same "Aha!" moment that you want from a mystery movie.
It may sound like I didn't like the movie, which isn't true. Stephen Fry as Mycroft was brilliant, the women characters were astounding and my feminist side was jumping for joy, the dialogue was clever, and overall, I enjoyed it.
I just wouldn't say it's as good as the first.