Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I had to work yesterday. It’s not usually a bad thing, but I had intended on taking the week before Christmas off. And the week afterwards. And a few more days, just because. So having to work put a dent in those plans. I think working yesterday was to make up for how much fun I had the previous evening.

Evan and I (and his lab partner, and his cousin) went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. The trailers were alright. We saw the trailers for Rock of Ages, which starred a number of rock songs from the 80’s, as well as some celebrities. It seemed to capitalize on nostalgia, and you can see my post a few weeks ago for my views on that. Not that I really blame a movie studio for making something like this. People try to recreate the best parts of growing up for the rest of their lives, and frequently pay a lot of money for that. We also saw the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. I thought it might make Evan pull a Scanners, but his head remained intact so we could watch a trailer for John Carter of Mars (based on some pulp books in the 30’s, before we learned – or cared – that it was too cold and oxygen-deprived to live) and Jack the Giant Killer. It looks to be based on the fairy tale of Jack and the Bean Stalk, but it had knights and armies and all sorts of gussied up stuff. It was also by Bryan Singer, of X-Men fame. It made me think we’ll soon see Brett Ratner's The Three Little Pigs, with Chris Tucker as the second pig and Charlie Sheen's return to the big screen as The Big Bad Wolf. ("No Charlie, it's 'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down.' Not 'I'll huff all your Blow.")

The movie itself opens with narration by Watson, reading in his head the book he’s writing about the latest adventure. I don’t mind opening (and closing) narration, but when it’s by one of the main characters and basically renders most of the movie as a flashback, you know that the spoiler alert narrator is going to survive. Anyhow, we soon get an explosion, and then Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) carrying a package down the street. Holmes tries to abscond with it, and after some witty banter, her escorts face off against him. A slow-motion action scene takes place inside his head as he pictures how the fight will go, and then the realtime fight takes place, exactly how he pictured it.

He catches up with Irene in an auction, who’s giving the package as payment to some old dude. The package turns out to be a bomb, and Irene slips away while the old guy freaks out. Holmes manages to save them, but not before the old guy also flees. Holmes sees him later, dead anyway, shot with a poison dart outside the auction house.

I supposed I should mark the preceding paragraphs with a spoiler alert, but all these take place before the title screen, so I thought it was alright. Anyway, the bomb-then-poison-dart thing was a bit of a problem for me. Why have a backup plan like that? Why not use the one with incredible collateral damage as plan B? Better yet, why not use both, with the bomb covering up the dart? Oh whoops, spoiler alert … they do that later in the movie. Also later, they have another backup plan. Guy with a knife fails, so they send a chaingun. Really? I mean, kudos for not always thinking your plans will always succeed, but they’re wildly disproportionate to each other.

Anyhow, back to the movie. Watson meets up with Holmes the day before his wedding, and much banter occurs. And many, many funny lines and scenes. I mean, I knew it would be funny, but I underestimated the amount and the depth of the funny. I laughed a whole lot.

Anyway, the action and humour barrel along from one location to the next, with a lot of interesting camera work, including scenes that fill us in on what Holmes is thinking, or what he’s done (how this works inside of Watson’s narration, I don’t know). And then there’s a scene in a forest, and the interesting camera shots get incredibly good. Man, does Guy Ritchie know how to shoot a movie! Slow-motion to fast-motion cuts. Shots through bullet holes in trees. He really gets the most out of the camera.

He also gets the most out of call-backs. There’s at least one Chehov’s gun that I remember, and there’s some tragic call-backs to lines at the beginning of the film, when Watson and Holmes are talking. And there’s also a shout-out to some of the later Sherlock Holmes books (besides the obvious), but I won’t spoil it here.

This is definitely a theatre movie. Lot’s of action, lots of humour, lots of interesting camera shots. Lots of other interesting stuff to hear. Almost no boring parts at all. But then, I may have been distracted near the end when the female lead asked “What do you see?” and Holmes answered “Everything.” Perhaps he doesn’t have the filter that people get when they grow older. It’s a filter that babies don’t have, either, but it keeps out all the boring we constantly see. We don’t need to constantly be aware of every tiny thing in our room, just what we’re concentrating on right now. Of course, Guy Ritchie knows this, and takes great advantage of it. When you see this movie, I’ll explain it to you.