Sherlock Holmes 2: The Brilliant Game of Shadows!

      
So, what happens when a Superman meets his Lex Luthor? A Wolverine his Sabretooth? A Batman his Joker?
A Sherlock Holmes, his Professor Moriarty?

We are talking about nemeses, gentlemen; and unless you know this fact clearly, it would be a bit difficult to digest fully why Holmes throws himself together with Moriarty into that cold abyss of Switzerland to die (with a strategic question mark), instead of fighting it out with his bare knuckles.
Arch Nemesis. Professor Moriarty! ( I remember the respect Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had given to this name in his novels. Good to see director Guy Ritchie appreciating the respect.)
And thus is born a brilliant sequel to the amazing adventure of Sherlock Holmes. Possibly his best on screen.
Till date. :)
The movie’s starting is not as intense as the earlier one, and one finds himself constantly trying not to get reminded of the scenes of the prequel. Holmes sitting alone in the restaurant after a failed dinner, the kickboxing style fight scene, the ‘overtly-covert’ disguises, the ‘haseeeeeeen’ Irene Adler’s sweet but poisonous smiles… everything seems a continuation of the original one. To the extent of making one nostalgic!
 
But then, one doesn’t need to do any homework to understand that Professor Moriarty is up to something really big.
As big as detonating the first World War, some 23 years before it actually happened.
 
And as the movie chugs along, (literally in that train scene), we fasten our seat belts for another thrilling and jaw dropping adventure filled with action and wit. Guy Ritchie has mischievously broken some of the predictabilities of the movie by changing the action sequences rather unexpectedly. Like, Holmes premeditating the entire action scene (as always), and while he’s executing it verbatim, Simza kills the assassin with her knife in one go (though she doesn’t ‘actually’ kill him), but the sequence breaks abruptly. Sherlock’s elder brother, Mycroft fits well in the story with his history-book keeping brain and political connections (as mentioned in the novels). Dr. Watson (Jude Law) is more confident and stylish in this one, and the story though dragging itself in the initial hour of the movie picks up pace really well.
 
All in all, a brilliant movie. “Totally worth my wait all these months”, as my fb status currently declares, with increasing number of likes as the minutes pass.
No, this sort-of-a-review post can not end without mentioning the brilliantly portrayed one-on-one chess game between Holmes and Moriarty in the movie’s climax which begins with a regular chess play, progresses into mental chess playing, and ends with both Holmes and Moriarty premeditating the physical fight sequence that would follow if initiated.

And the next thing we see is Sherlock taking Moriarty with himself, jumping off in that bottomless pit, instead of actuating the sequence. A fitting end to a fitting nemesis.
The question mark that Holmes puts to the ‘The End’ tag of Watson also puts a question mark on the death of Moriarty.
After all, it’s an independent work of Guy Ritchie, gentlemen, not an original Arthur Conan Doyle! :D


Alok K.
P.S. Warner Bros. has announced that the first draft for Sherlock Holmes 3 is being produced with screenwriter Drew Pearce writing the script.
One wait ends, another begins! :)
P.P.S. Oh, and by the way, new year’s greetings!