Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows puts Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law back in 1891 London, then sends them across Europe to stop a professor with a plan for war. Guy Ritchie directs. Kieran Mulroney and Michele Mulroney wrote the screenplay. The film runs 129 minutes and follows the 2009 hit as the second entry in the series. It is an action mystery, and its tagline promises the game is afoot. The game here is bigger, louder and more crowded than the first one.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Moriarty Has No Conscience
The sequel’s best idea is its villain. Professor James Moriarty, played by Jared Harris, is not just Holmes’ intellectual equal. He has a capacity for evil and a lack of conscience that may give him an advantage. That is the engine of the whole film. Harris plays him quiet and reasonable, which makes him scarier than any shouting mastermind. The film knows it. Every scene between Holmes and Moriarty crackles because the movie finally has a counterweight to Downey’s restless detective.
The plot starts in 1891. A series of bombings blamed on political radicals pushes France and Germany to the brink of war. Holmes intercepts one bomb meant for expert surgeon Dr. Hoffmanstahl and his former lover Irene Adler. He then explains that the true culprit is their employer, Moriarty. Moriarty has both of them assassinated after they flee. It is a cold, efficient opening. It tells you exactly what kind of enemy Holmes is dealing with.
Watson, Mary and a Train to Brighton
The film’s emotional spine is Watson’s marriage. After the wedding of Watson and Mary Morstan, Holmes meets Moriarty for the first time. Moriarty taunts him about murdering Adler and threatens to kill Watson and Mary because Holmes interfered. Holmes vows to defeat him. Then Moriarty’s men ambush Watson and Mary on a train to their honeymoon in Brighton. Holmes throws Mary from the train into a river, where Mycroft rescues her.
That sequence is the movie in miniature. It is absurd, fast and genuinely tense. Holmes and Watson defeat Moriarty’s men, and the partnership survives another round. Law is the steady center of these scenes. He plays Watson as a man who loves his friend and also wants a life without him. The film gets real mileage from that tension.
Simza and the Romani Fortune-Teller
Noomi Rapace plays Madame Simza Heron, a Romani fortune-teller. Holmes meets her after taking a letter from Adler, a letter sent by Simza’s brother René. He defeats an assassin sent to kill her, but she flees. Later, Holmes and Watson travel to Paris and find her. Holmes tells her she was targeted because René works for Moriarty and may have told her his plans.
Simza leads them to the headquarters of an anarchist group she and René belonged to. Moriarty has forced the group to plant bombs for him. Holmes deduces the bomb is in the Paris Opera. He is wrong. The bomb is in a nearby hotel, where it kills several businessmen. The blast is a cover-up for the assassination of Alfred Meinhard by Sebastian Moran, an expert sharpshooter.
That misdirection is the film’s smartest structural move. Holmes is brilliant and still gets it wrong. The stakes feel real because his deductions can fail.
What Works and What Wastes
The action sequences earned praise, and they deserve it. Ritchie’s style is all speed and clutter, but the set pieces here have shape. Downey and Law have an easy rhythm. Harris is the best addition to the cast. The film also incorporates elements of Conan Doyle’s short stories, including “The Final Problem” and “The Adventure of the Empty House,” more closely than the first film did.
The supporting cast is where the film stumbles. Rachel McAdams returns as Irene Adler, and the movie kills her off early without giving her much to do. That is a waste of a good character and a good actor. The same goes for Stephen Fry’s Mycroft Holmes, who shows up as comic relief and little else. The film keeps introducing people it does not know how to use.
Here is how the pieces rank, from strongest to weakest:
- Jared Harris as Professor Moriarty, the film’s true center.
- The Holmes-Watson partnership, still the franchise’s best asset.
- The train ambush and the Paris bomb misdirection.
- Noomi Rapace’s Simza, underused but effective.
- The supporting cast, especially McAdams and Fry, wasted.
The film was commercially successful, with a worldwide gross of over $543 million. That number makes sense. It is a crowd-pleaser with a strong villain and two stars who enjoy each other’s company.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a sequel that improves on its premise without fixing its habits. The mystery is more personal, the villain is a genuine threat, and the Holmes-Watson bond carries the emotional weight. But the film still treats its women and its supporting players as scenery. McAdams gets an early exit. Fry gets jokes. Rapace gets a role that could have been the heart of the movie and instead stays a plot device.
The parts worth watching are the ones where Moriarty and Holmes sit across from each other and talk. Everything else is noise and motion. That is not a fatal flaw for an action mystery. It is a limit. The film is good, and it could have been better with the same cast and a sharper script.
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