A Game of Shadows

There have been a few films I have anticipated this holiday season, but the most anticipated has for sure been the latest installment in the Sherlock Holmes franchise directed by Guy Ritchie.  I remember when the first Sherlock Holmes came out my wife's grandma went with some friends to see it expecting a 19th Century period piece.  They walked out no more than 20 minutes into the film because if you have seen the first film, or if you know anything about Guy Ritchie films, that is about the last thing it has to offer.

So, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows isn't any different.  In fact, it is really just more of what we got from the first movie which is an entertaining bromance between Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law), some Matrix style slow motion camera effects, and an all in all fun film.  The movie continues basically where the first left off.  Dr. Watson is engaged and soon going to get married thus potentially breaking up his and Sherlock's relationship while Sherlock's nemesis Professor Moriarty is up to no good. Only Sherlock Holmes can stop him from starting a World War alluding to the several years coming World War I.

Something I particularly enjoyed about this installment was a nice little nod to Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, and what I believe to be a reference to Nobel Prize creator Alfred Nobel.  If you watch it, look for the Joker reference in the sequence where Holmes is disguised as a woman on the train which is shown briefly in the movie's trailer.  For the Alfred Nobel reference there is a character named Alfred Meinhart who plays an arms dealer, and there are a number of uses of dynamite in the film.  It may be a stretch, but I believe it was intentional seeing as they share the same first name, and before creating the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel was known as the inventor of dynamite and was an armaments manufacturer for his occupation.  In the end, even without the Easter eggs, if you enjoyed the first film, it is just more of it, and that's a good thing.  I look forward to the inevitable third installment, and I hope the film's formula can continue to remain fun and fresh.