Blogorium Review: Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows

 I'm not sure whether Guy Ritchie's second Sherlock Holmes film, A Game of Shadows, is more or less successful than his 2009 take on Arthur Conan Doyle's universally known detective. On the one hand, there's less action and more talking, particularly in the film's climax; on the other hand, the action scenes are more bombastic, louder, and full or more editing and camera trickery in ways that, frankly, didn't interest me in the slightest.

 Unlike many Holmes purists, I'm willing to accept the concept that Ritchie has re-envisioned the mysteries as an 1890s equivalent of "buddy cop" movies. The execution isn't close to Doyle, but at least Ritchie is willing to keep one element faithful: the relationship between Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Doctor John Watson (Jude Law) continues to be the consistent thread of the stories the films are (loosely) based on. Law and Downey banter, trade barbs, and function as equal parts of a team - it's no wonder that Holmes is so troubled by Watson's impending nuptials with Mary (Kelly Reilly).

 Holmes is scheming ways to distract Watson in large part because the good doctor has been drawn (unwittingly) into the increasingly dangerous stakes of a game between the great detective and the "Napoleon of Crime," Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris). What seems at first to be a contrivance designed to keep Watson separated from Mary turns out, in fact, to be Holmes' awkward attempt to keep her safe (even if it means throwing her off of a train). Moriarty is manipulating anarchists in an attempt to start a World War, largely because his anonymous ownership in medical, munitions, and produce will make the professor a tidy profit.

 Harris, as Moriarty, has all of the credibility as a villain that Mark Strong seemed to lack in the last film, and his ability to strike without raising a finger is demonstrated early on when he (SPOILER) abruptly kills Irene Adler (the returning Rachel McAdam's) while never moving from his teacup. His influence and intellect is more than a match for Holmes, and it's nice to see the two of them in a battle of wits (during a literal and figurative chess match) in the climax of the film. In fact, that's coupled with detective work elsewhere by Watson and Madam Sizma Heron (Noomi Rapace), a gypsy searching for her brother - who may or may not be part of the assassination plot Moriarty hopes will light the fuse on his war.

 Alas, this moment is also where A Game of Shadows takes an unexpected turn, and not for the better. I'm fine with having Moriarty as the villain of the second Holmes film, but to jump so quickly (POSSIBLE SPOILER) to the ending of The Adventure of the Final Problem after having introduced his nemesis so early struck me as foolish. It was clear that Holmes wouldn't actually die (it is only the second movie in what will, no doubt, be a long series), which invokes The Seven Per-Cent Solution in suggesting that Holmes fakes his own death. However, it's something of a cheat to have Holmes and Moriarty plunge to their deaths if neither one of them really dies.

  You'll notice that I haven't mentioned Noomi Rapace much in this review, and that's because she doesn't have much to do in the film. After demonstrating she can hold her own in a physical struggle with an assassin (one trying to clean up Moriarty's "loose ends"), her role becomes nothing more than a person who gets Holmes and Watson from "here to there" - in this instance, from France to Germany.

 She doesn't really have anything else to do except be another body running from the weapons of war on display in the film, giving Ritchie an excuse to blow things up and tear trains and trees apart with machine gun fire. This brings me to the "big" action setpiece of the film that just doesn't work: Holmes, Watson, Heron, and other gypsies are running from German soldiers and Moriarty's hired sharpshooter, Colonel Sebastian Moran (Paul Anderson). Ritchie employs a series of speed ramps, cgi shots of bullets being loaded and fired, slow-mo explosions, and auditory overload for what feels like forever, only for our heroes to escape on the train we knew they'd escape on. There's no tension, just gimmickry without purpose.

 For a while early in the film, it feels like Ritchie and Downey are trying too hard to recapture the "manic" nature of the first Sherlock Holmes; his pursuit of Adler at the beginning of the film lacks any charisma or "pep," and Downey's many disguises border on ridiculous as the film wears on. Only when Moriarty enters the picture does business begin to pick up, although Jude Law and Downey do their best to keep things fresh in the meantime.

 So as not to end on a sour note, I thought it fair to mention the stroke of genius on Ritchie's part to cast Stephen Fry as Holmes' older brother, Mycroft. He brings an eccentricity and sense of mirth to the film that's desperately needed, as well as a more direct underscoring to the homoerotic tones between Holmes and Watson. I'll even overlook the nude scene, which is reminiscent of Austin Powers and not entirely necessary - I'm certain Mary would have been equally uncomfortable with Mycroft's attitude rather than the fact he was naked. Still, Fry brings an energy that seems to be missing early in the film and is a welcome addition to the extended cast.

 The question remains: should you see it? Well, that depends on how you feel about the last film. Did you like it? Were you entertained, if intellectually left desiring more? You probably will feel a little better about parts of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, but the cons do even out the pros, leaving a film that is in many ways a step forward and a step back simultaneously. You probably won't regret the overall experience as popcorn entertainment goes, but we'll need to wait and see if a truly great Holmes film from this team is in the cards.

Blogorium Review: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution

I don't know what to make of the 1976 Sherlock Holmes adventure The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, although I think that many detractors of the 2009 reboot starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law might want to rethink the "it's awful because Guy Ritchie made Holmes an action star," at least once they've seen this curious mishmash of detective fiction, wry but inconsistent humor, nonsensical action, and odd pacing.

The story, which is non-canonical (meaning that it's not one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales), was adapted for the screen by the author's novel, Nicholas Meyer* and directed by Herbert Ross, deals with Sherlock Holmes' increasing addiction to cocaine (hinted at in the Doyle stories but made explicit in Meyer's novel; the title refers to Holmes' preferred mixture - seven-per-cent cocaine, ninety-three-per-cent water). In a fit of paranoia, Holmes (Nicol Williamson) locks himself in his study and informs Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) that the nefarious Professor Moriarty (Laurence Olivier) is plotting to kill him. The befuddled Moriarty appeals to Watson, confused to why he is the source of threatening letters and being stalked by Holmes. Watson and Mycroft Holmes (Charles Gray) conspire to trick the detective into visiting Vienna, home of famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). During treatment, Holmes, Watson, and Freud become embroiled in a kidnapping scheme involving Lola Deveraux (Vanessa Redgrave), a former patient of Freud and mistress of Baron von Leinsdorf (Jeremy Kemp).

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is meant to be a comedy - at least, IMDB indicates that alongside "adventure" and "crime" - although you wouldn't really know it for long stretches of the film. While it does open promising that "the story is true - only the facts have been made up," the film teeters between wry and serious. I can understand chuckling at the voice-over from Watson; it relays, in a clever fashion, where this adventure fits in with other Holmes adventures**. The voice-over, which I would suspect Meyer lifted directly from his novel, disappears shortly after Holmes and Watson arrive in Vienna, and the humorous elements could easily be taken as serious, compounded by a shift in tone near the end of the film (more on this below). Whether we're supposed to find Lowenstein (Joel Grey)'s horror at a dead nun funny or not is up to you.

After seeing the film in totality, I was surprised how much Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes borrows from The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, particularly the beginning and ending. The erratic, unpredictable-but-nevertheless-brilliant Holmes bounces around London, confounding Watson, hiding in the bushes, disguised, and generally making life difficult for his compatriots. In this film, the blame lies centrally in his cocaine abuse, but the "manic" Holmes of Ritchie's film is manifest in Nicol Williamson's performance. The stoic, slightly annoyed Watson is less apparently embodied in Robert Duvall, but I must admit I was slightly distracted by his accent, which shifted between bad and laughable (the voice-overs are the worst)***.

Late in the film, after Sigmund Freud's role becomes as perfunctory as Jack the Ripper's in Murder By Decree, the trail of clues gives way to the sort of action 2009's Sherlock Holmes is criticized for: there's a car train chase, a gun fight that becomes a sword fight which inexplicably moves from inside a train car to on top of the train, Sigmund Freud providing the inspiration for Liam Neeson in Taken (I only wish I was kidding), and a moment which I must assume was meant to be clever but is instead painfully stupid (it involves axes and a superfluous train car).

This sequence is followed, unfortunately, by a radical shift in tone, brought about by a need to justify Sigmund Freud's presence in the film (his "treatment" earlier in the narrative merely consists of hypnotizing Holmes while the detective detoxes), and a final hypnosis session ham-handedly tries to explain away Holmes' mistrust of women, his addiction, his choice of profession, and his suspicion of Professor Moriarty. To say much more would spoil the end of the film, but it culminates in an abrupt and brutal flashback that robs the film of its lighthearted tone. Then again, the film also attempts to shoehorn in an eleventh-hour romance angle for no reason.

Unfortunately, despite being well-acted (if not well-accented), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is too disjointed to be effective as a film. Like its 2009 descendant, the film is all over the map tonally: partly comic, somewhat sleuth-centric, sporadically dark, and unnecessarily action-heavy with a dash of religious overtones. Guy Ritchie's take on Holmes at least balances the disparate elements and settles to entertain, but if you're looking for a funny non-canonical Sherlock Holmes film, might I direct you towards Without a Clue, which is funnier and has a better mystery. Like Murder By Decree, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is a curio, a diversion, the sort of "Sherlock Holmes meets ___" mashup which is periodically in vogue, but not much more.


* Many of you know Meyers better for his involvement in Star Trek's II, IV, and VI or, as most people like to call them, "the good ones."
** At the outset, the film identifies itself as what "really" happened when Holmes "died" in The Final Problem: Watson apparently fabricated Holmes' death while the detective snuck away to combat his addiction.
*** For the record, Alan Arkin's accent is less laughable, although not particularly good.

Blogorium Review: Murder By Decree

Now that we're in the dog days of DVD, as Blu-Ray is creeping in and digital downloads are looming in the distance, the one thing that can be counted on when a remake or a re-imagining of famous source material hits theatres is retails shelves being flooded with back-catalog titles tangentially related to the new film. Every now and then, attentive viewers can catch a movie they've never heard of in this glut of titles. For example, the release of Warner Brothers' Sherlock Holmes caused previously unavailable or forgotten Holmes films to get their day in the limelight. Such was the case with Murder By Decree, released by Lionsgate late last year, a film that has an interesting premise to say the least.

1979's Murder By Decree is based on an "Original Script" by John Hopkins, taking the Jack the Ripper case and inserting the facts into the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes. It's a clever idea, one that was used later the same year in Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time (which sets H.G. Wells after Jack the Ripper*). The film has a wonderful cast, and works in a number of ways, but suffers from a setback that I cannot quite come to terms with.

The film manages to blend the Ripper mythos with the Holmes canon fairly well; well into the career of sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer) and Dr. John Watson (James Mason) are celebrities of a sort in London - a scene where Watson chides Holmes for his lack of humility stems from the latter's insistence on riding in an open carriage to be recognized - but thanks to political machinations in Scotland Yard are on the outs with the police.

When a local organization in Whitechapel approaches Holmes to help with the murders, the duo find themselves welcomed by Inspectors Lestrade (Frank Finlay) and Foxborough (David Hemmings), but are threatened with arrest by Sir Charles Warren (Anthony Quayle), a Royalist and the new head of Scotland Yard. Holmes and Watson are left to piece together the clues on their own, and quickly discover something much more sinister than a serial killer in London's East End.

I added the above quotations to original script because the film neglects to mention until the closing credits that Hopkins screenplay is based on Elwyn Jones and John Lloyd's "The Ripper File." As I imagine that many of you haven't seen Murder By Decree but have seen the Hughes brothers' From Hell, much of the intricacies of the mystery will already be familiar to you. Even if you've had a cursory interest in the Ripper killings, you can probably figure out where Murder By Decree is headed before Holmes gets there, which does not work to the favor of a two hour movie.

What does work for Murder By Decree is the cast; the aforementioned Plummer and Mason have a comfortable relationship as Holmes and Watson that doesn't rely on reducing either one to stereotypes (the most common being Holmes as the distant savant and Watson as the buffoon sidekick). Instead, they behave as colleagues would who spent years together working in tandem, and the two actors have a banter that suggests this pairing extended well before the movie started. But there's also fine work being done by David Hemmings, Anthony Quayle, Genevieve Bujold, Susan Clark, Frank Finlay, and Donald Sutherland, who plays psychic Robert Lees, a man who knows more than even he is willing to tell Holmes. Fans of A Christmas Story will recognize actress Tedde Moore (who plays Mrs. Lees) as Ralphie's teacher Miss Shields.

Murder By Decree was directed by Bob Clark, who is alternately known to various genre fans for a wide ranging body of work (if you're into comedies, then he made Porky's, Children's movie fans know him best for A Christmas Story, and horror nuts have Clark to thank for Deathdream, Black Christmas, and Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things). Here, Clark is operating somewhere between slasher movie and period drama.

The early parts of Murder By Decree alternate effectively between foggy Whitechapel and pristine Baker Street, and Clark makes the most out of the model shots that establish London throughout the film (Murder By Decree was shot partially in London and partially in Canada). When Clark shoots Jack the Ripper on the prowl, there is a hint of the anonymous killer POV shots from Black Christmas, although we're given too many good looks at the Ripper's face too early in the film for my money.

Despite this, I can't quite shake the impression that Murder By Decree feels like an elevated "made for TV movie." I've been trying to put my finger on exactly why, but it's not one element that does it. Partly I blame this on the lighting, which often has no sense of mood to it; instead, every set is lit evenly, so that even when characters should be hidden in shadows, they're clearly visible. There's no depth to any of the locations of sets because of the flat, television-esque cinematography. The music doesn't help much either; when it's not jarringly inappropriate for the scene, it fails to create a mood that's conducive to the story.

The editing is also a prime culprit, lending an episodic structure to the film that strips it of any narrative cohesiveness. It seems that whenever a scene is done, the camera lingers for a little too long on the establishing model shot of London, as if punctuating commercial breaks. Murder By Decree establishes no rhythm in the story, and while there is an action packed chase between Holmes and one of the murderers, the scene which immediately follows it lacks the gravitas I can only assume Hopkins and Clark were aiming for.

SEMI-SPOILER ALERT: Holmes confronts the Prime Minister (John Gielgud), Sir Charles, and another high ranking member (forgive me, but the name escapes me and IMDB is less than helpful in this matter) about a Masonic conspiracy to protect the Royal Family that necessitates the "Jack the Ripper" murders, and while the scene should be a tense challenge of power by the great detective, the flat lighting and ho-hum editing rob the sequence of any power. Instead, it's a rather long scene where Plummer lays out the facts of his case and Gielgud and the others claim to know nothing about it, ending in a stalemate completely undermined by a chirpy ending of Holmes and Watson riding around in a carriage laughing.

That may also have something to do with the "TV" feel, as the credits have a "Blah Blah was played by This Actor" text while a "memorable" scene they were in plays silently. And yet Murder By Decree was released in theatres in February of 1979. It's not a bad movie by any means, but what does work - the acting, some of the atmosphere and mystery - is often canceled out by unintentionally dull lighting, awkward pacing, and an overlong running time. I recommend renting Murder By Decree if you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, if you have an interest in Jack the Ripper (or From Hell), or if you'd like to see that the Guy Ritchie take on the Holmes / Watson relationship didn't simply materialize out of thin air (one could easily make the argument that the Plummer / Mason dynamic is echoed in the Downey Jr. / Law relationship).

Stay tuned for tomorrow review; since I brought up Jack the Ripper today, it's only fair to segueway into another movie that tangentially involves the Whitechapel murders - the 2010 remake of The Wolfman.


* The Holmes / Jack the Ripper crossover was also the subject of 1965's A Study in Terror.

The Week in Preview

Folks, there's just so many things to cover that the Cap'n isn't really sure where to start. Over the week ahead I should have reviews up for the following:

- The Informant

- The Wolfman (2010)

- Get Him to the Greek

- Breathless (part of French Film Friday)

- Micmacs (also a part of French Film Friday and the new Jean-Pierre Jeunet film)

- Iron Man 2 (which I've now seen twice)

- MGM: When the Lion Roars

- Murder By Decree (Sherlock Holmes takes on Jack the Ripper)

Plus if I can ever settle down and write it up, a review of Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Most Iconic Flops, a brief digression on Amazon's pre-order listings for Criterion titles that nobody is vouching for, and a lead in to next week's All Hamlet edition of the Blogorium (featuring a review a day for the Olivier, Gibson, Branagh, Hawke, and Tennant versions of the play). Plus I still never got around to my Hot Tub Time Machine review from nearly two months ago...

The problem is that I can't decide what to kick things off with. What do you want to read about first?

Blogorium Review: Sherlock Holmes

I'm afraid I don't have much to say about Sherlock Holmes. I really enjoyed the movie, which is breezy, frequently amusing (and laugh out loud so) with a compelling story. It's quite well acted, perhaps no more evident than the leading duo of Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, which is to say nothing untoward about Rachel McAdams or Mark Strong.

To what will be many a person's surprise, Jude Law's Watson steals the movie out from right under Downey's Holmes. Mark Strong's Lord Blackwood is a credible and interesting villain, and *SEMI SPOILER* perhaps not the only one - there's certainly a good set up for the next Sherlock Holmes film, which I have no doubt there will be when word of mouth gets out about this film.

If you enjoyed Iron Man or Star Trek, or comparably entertaining films that don't necessarily assume you're checking your brain at the door, I have no doubt you'll take quite a shining to Sherlock Holmes. Guy Ritchie did quite a bang up job of paying credence to the existing Holmes canon while simultaneously moving their namesake in new and interesting directions. Don't misunderstand me: Sherlock Holmes' deductive skills are evident from beginning to end, and the central mystery of the film - Lord Blackwood's seemingly impossible return from the grave - are handled in clever ways. All of the clues are available, if doled out carefully, so that when Holmes and Blackwood meet again at the end the speech is logical and makes sense.

Again, I'm at a bit of a loss of how to continue talking about the film. I dare not reveal much more of the movie, as the trailers wonderfully represent what you're in for, but with a great deal extra. It is very much an 1890s "buddy cop" film, but one executed so well that you don't really mind. Where it needs to be faithful, it is; where it chooses to deviate, it does so cleverly. You'll have fun, and you won't feel insulted for having seen it. Not too shabby, considering some of the movies the Cap'n sat through this year.