I really enjoyed the first Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movie. I wasn’t expecting much from it and it blew away all my expectations. I was quite excited when it was announced there would be a sequel. Unfortunately, the sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, is as disappointing as the first film was entertaining.
The movie isn’t completely without its merits. Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law have very good chemistry as Holmes and Watson. Holmes’s urban camouflage was great, and definitely my favorite part of the movie. And hey, who can complain about casting Stephen Fry as Mycroft!
But overall, the movie was a bad combination of slow and confusing. I didn’t realize that Rachel McAdams’s character, Irene Adler, was dead until long after her onscreen demise. It wasn’t a great loss, killing off Adler. She and Holmes didn’t have much chemistry in the first movie in my opinion. But Holmes’s chemistry with the woman she was replaced with, Noomi Rapace’s Madam Simza Heron, wasn’t any better.
The third Sherlock Holmes movie is currently in the works. Hopefully the producers solve the mystery of the failed sequel in time to save this franchise.