These days I try not to hate movies. Mainly because there’s nothing more pointless: after all you’ve already lost the time and the money, and all those revenge plots will only waste more of both. Anger is a better response. Anger is good, because it forces activity. Hate is passive and lazy. It doesn’t force justification because quickly enough it justifies itself. Hate gets in the way, leaves you spluttering and gasping, like some beached, vitriolic trout. Anger on the other hand is like fuel. You can use it to power forward, get you slicing and dicing and analysing your way to find out what made you angry in the first place. And when you get to the point when you’re staring that cause in the face, then you can get really mad. And boy oh boy, am I pissed about Sherlock Holmes 2.
Sherlock Holmes 1, an action-packed, stylish and steampunk reimagining of the famous sleuth from Lock, Stock director Guy Ritchie, was a really good movie. Sure it was about as deep as a paddling pool, with a plot in serious danger of plagiarising Scooby Doo, but it was great fun for all that, for two reasons. Firstly, the action was very well directed, especially the neat slow-mo deduce-then-fight scenes, which, in the way of all good fight scenes, actually reflected the character doing the fighting, with Holmes fighting as much with his brain as with his fists. Secondly, Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr turned out to be a fantastic pairing; the born straight man and the habitual manic bouncing off each other, like a rubber ball off the wall of a squash court. All this, backed up by some excellent writing, a solid character arc and a kickass score, made the first film a joy to watch.
It also was obviously planned with a sequel in mind. SH1 after all ended on a teaser, suggesting that at some point in the near future, Holmes’ archenemy Professor Moriarty would emerge menacingly from the shadows. So, surprise-surprise, Sherlock Holmes 2 is a Holmes (Downey Jr) VS Moriarty (Jared Harris) story. In Europe at the turn of the century, tensions are mounting. France and Germany are slipping into war, propelled by a series of bombings they blame on each other. But Sherlock Holmes thinks different. In the bombings, and in a series of targeted assassinations, he sees the guiding hand of criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty, and is hell-bent on stopping his evil plans. Dr Watson (Jude Law) meanwhile is looking forward to a retirement from adventures, and married life. Unfortunately Moriarty has no wish to let Watson live so easily. As such the Doctor is forced to once more accompany Holmes on an adventurous romp through Europe to bring down the nefarious Professor.
This all sounds rather exciting does it not? At least on paper it looks like it. Why there are shoot-outs on trains, and explosions in Paris, and more trains, and more explosions and more running than happens in a whole series of Doctor Who: what’s not to like? The answer to which question is, well, just read back over all those things. Then think about those things in the context of Sherlock Holmes. You know. The detective. He may be a pretty fighty detective in this version, as well as some sort of mad scientist and also apparently a ninja, with enough money for his own costume department. But despite that, the first film still managed to remember that Sherlock Holmes is a goddamned detective and not some sort of steampunk James Bond. The first film did have explosions and overblown fight scenes, but, those knew their place. They simply spiced up the plot and characters: they didn’t try to replace them.
Unfortunately this is the reverse with SH2. Admittedly the film is working with worse material. The plotting here is even weaker than it is in SH1. But that isn’t the main problem. That would be that the whole, threadbare plot just feels like set-up for the action, and as such any actual deduction is all-but dispensed with. There is none of the first film’s gradual assembly of clues, prompting an excitingly tense solving of the mystery. In SH2 the action is considered to be more important than the plot. Which you know, completely misses the point of having your main character be a detective, but what the hell eh? At least things explode.
But, all might have been fine, had not the characters also been royally cocked up. Admittedly, Downey Jr and Jude Law are still on good form. Their banter is still enjoyable, and made me laugh more than once. But Sim (Noomi Rapace), the new woman, is nothing more than a plot mechanism crossed with a Gypsy stereotype. And Moriarty isn’t much better. See, neither of them is given any relationship at all with either Holmes or Watson. Sim tags along with the duo because she cares for her mysterious brother, not because of any developing closeness with either of them. And Holmes fights Moriarty because Holmes is good and Moriarty is evil. There’s no great interesting conflict of ideals, as in the Dark Knight, with Batman and the Joker as twin extremes of Order and Chaos. There is some sense the filmmakers tried to give their battle the character of a game to prove which one of them is cleverest. That would have been interesting; unfortunately the film fails to really establish that dynamic, and in the end, Holmes’ fight is bereft of any of the moral ambiguity that idea would entail. And, to top it all off, the film even manages to squander the Holmes/Watson dynamic, in failing to progress from the first film. In SH2, just as in SH1, Holmes is pissed at Watson leaving him to go off and get married. Except that that dynamic already ran its course in the first movie, so what SH2 is left with just feels like a thinner, regurgitated version of SH1’s character arc. And this is not the last of the problems.
The major issue of SH2 is this. Action in movies can never, ever, ever, EVER be the point of a film. Action is only ever good if you understand and care about the people fighting and why they are fighting. If you don’t understand or care, the action loses its impact. That’s not to say it can’t pass the time: it just won’t be memorable. What’s worse is when the action overstays its welcome. Then boredom sets in, and, in SH2, boredom, by the middle of the second act, had set in, dug in and was busy digging an intricate trench system. Once again, on paper, it sounds awesome: Holmes, Watson and their gypsy allies are fleeing their nefarious enemy, pursued by both soldiers and honest-to-goodness artillery fire. On screen however, it is one of the most tedious things I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. I did not give a shit about the deaths of the barely developed gypsy characters, I thought the way they handled the fighting was both senseless and annoyingly ludicrous, the way it ended was horrifically contrived and, above all, I loathed the overused slow motion. The whole, goddamned point of slow motion in these movies is to illustrate Holmes’ pre-fight deductions. It’s a really clever way to both reflect character and let us know what’s going on in a fight scene, which otherwise would happen too quickly to be understood. Using it to emphasise every shot made during a long chase sequence slows everything down, robs the scene of excitement, makes the special effect lose impact and, in general, makes everything unbelievably dull. By the end of that scene I had just lost all patience with the whole movie. I entered the third act wishing the whole thing would just get it over with.
Well it did. And here, finally I found the truest cause of my anger, because this shoddy, ramshackle heap of a movie had the temerity to end… well. The pacing was good. The contest was exciting. There was a neat little role reversal, emphasising the trust between Holmes and Watson. The ending where both Holmes and Moriarty go do some slow-mo fight deduction wasn’t handled perfectly, but was at least interesting to watch, and emphasised the whole ‘battle of intellects’ thing far better than swapping chess-lingo. And the final moment, where the fight is concluded, even carries a little emotional weight. argh, Argh, ARRRGH. See I’m fine when a film is bad throughout. It just shows that the people making it really didn’t know what they were doing, and hopefully will learn in future. What is worse, what is really really terrible about SH2, is that the quality of the ending, the funny back-and-forth between Holmes and Watson, the inspired casting of Stephen Fry as Holmes’ weird brother Mycroft, are all evidence that the people making this film did know what they were doing. It’s just that they were just so devoid of taste or work ethic that they just couldn’t be bothered to fix the film’s deep-seated problems. And that is inexcusable.
So, my conclusion? Don’t go see SH2. It’s a futile plea I know: the movie has already done so well, and the movie will probably get the sequel it expects. But still. Don’t go see it. Don’t support a piece of work so utterly lazy. Don’t throw your money away after this loathsome, time-wasting piece of shit. Not because its irredeemably bad. But because the glimmerings of gold amidst the rubbish are evidence of a movie that could have been better, but did not receive the attention it deserved.
