Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

If you don't go and see this film for the twists and turns within the plot or the witty comments made by Holmes, then you should go see it just to perv on Robert Downey Jr.


Me and my boyfriend went to go and see this last Wednesday in the cinema. We went even though we hadn't seen the first film and were slightly concerned that we weren't going to be able to follow the story. Having now seen the first film, a lot more of the jokes in the second film now make sense and the plot makes more sense, however the sequel can be enjoyed as a stand-alone film.


Holmes and Watson contrast each other perfectly; Holmes has a cheeky and arrogant persona and a wicked sense of humour, where as Watson is more down to earth and quietly confident. But when the 2 are together, good things happen. 

One of Holmes' more adventurous disguises

The film itself confused me. At times I was drawn in and was so interested in what was happening and it's fast pace, then at other times I felt as if it were dragging. The dragging was probably caused by the fact that some of the content made no sense to me due to not seeing the first one to be honest, so that is my own fuck up.

The locations for filming are absolutely beautiful. The film climaxes at a beautiful location in Sweden (I think...) and trust me, the ending is a shocker. Don't cry like I did.

This film has everything. Romance between Watson and his wife, action between the goodies and the badies, humour from Holmes pushing Watsons wife off of a moving train into a river and the wonderful Stephen Fry adding a touch of sophistication and wit to the mix.

Maybe it is just me and this sort of genre does not agree with me (or I am stupid), but I felt at times like the audience was forgotten about. Sometimes the reasons behind certain decisions being made was not made clear to the audience, thus causing me to be lost in the plot and have no bloody idea what was going on. The doubt always got cleared up in the following scenes, but none the less, some things could have been made a lot clearer.

Similar to Robert Downey Jr's personal life, the film is a happy medium between positives and negatives, but is definitely leaning more towards the positives than the negatives. Not so pants that I wont go out and buy the DVD, but not so good that I am going to watch the DVD the second I get home. Everyone has got films like this in their collection; you forgot they exist and that you own them, and then you see it in your collection and go "OMG I LOVE THIS FILM, I TOTALLY FORGOT I HAVE IT" and you watch it and the process repeats itself.

Despite the slight issues within the film, I did really enjoy it. Especially the ending, oh you wait for the ending!  Definitely worth getting your butt down to the cinema to check out :)

I rate this film as an 8/10 :]

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