Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

At the end of the 19^th century, a series of bombings puts France and Germany on the brink of war. Though the blame falls on anarchists, madly brilliant English detective Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) believes Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris) is behind it all. Unfortunately, the meticulous Moriarty leaves no damning evidence, and so it is up to Holmes to uncover and foil his plot. He is assisted by his even more eccentric brother, Mycroft (Stephen Fry), a Gypsy fortuneteller caught in the crossfire (Noomi Rapace), and, reluctantly, his newly-married partner, Dr. John Watson (Jude Law).

Set after 2009’s Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie’s follow-up keeps its predecessor’s suspense and humor but jettisons the complexity of the plot. Whether that is a net gain or a net loss will depend on your expectations. Personally, I found that while the 2009 outing aimed too high, A Game of Shadows aims too low. Moriarty’s machinations are fairly transparent, and the bits of mystery regarding the identity of the assassin feel shoehorned in.

Fortunately, plotting issues do not detract from the film’s brisk pace and overall sense of fun. There are assassins at seemingly every turn, and Holmes’ calculating martial arts mastery is utilized again to good effect. On the other hand, the use of new-for-the-time weaponry such as machine pistols and Ritchie’s affinity for Max Payne-style bullet time sequences do not sync well with the film’s otherwise Victorian character.

Downey again anchors this film, portraying Holmes as a highly talented madman. He nails both the accent and the idiosyncrasies and performs with gusto. Law’s Watson is decidedly less stiff this time around, though he’s still very much the yin (marksmanship, medical skills, reason) to Holmes’ yang (deductive ability, esoteric knowledge, insanity). Of the new additions to the cast, Fry fares best here. His Mycroft is essentially an older Sherlock turned up to 11, a dry-witted loon who somehow commands the respect of the English government. Harris gives Moriarty a ruthless edge, but one cannot help but feel that he is wrong for the part. Anthony Hopkins or even the rumored Brad Pitt would have been a more interesting choice. And while Rapace gets to do plenty of running around, her dialogue, screen time, and overall contributions are minimal for such a supposedly important character. The erstwhile Lisbeth Salander deserves a better showcase for abilities.

A Game of Shadows draws heavily from Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Final Problem" and incorporates some breathtaking shots of Switzerland’s iconic Reichenbach Falls. While that might make the ending seem like a forgone conclusion, viewers will do well to remember that in the world of Sherlock Holmes, nothing is as it seems.

8/10

The Walkaway

In December 1979, retired Wichita police officer Gunther Fahnstiel accidently backs over a stranger with an RV. He finds a large cache of money alongside the body and decides to stow it away for safe keeping. Ten years later, 77-year-old Gunther breaks out of his nursing home in an effort to find his hidden money. He is pursued by his wife, his ex-bouncer stepson, a former police colleague, and a greedy, philandering real estate developer. As Gunther scans his memory to remember the hiding place, an incident from his police days in the early 1950s threatens to derail him.

Scott Phillips’ 2003 follow-up to The Ice Harvest retains much of the former’s dark humor and imbues it with a sense of the past. On the surface, the tonal shifts are hard to detect. After all, The Walkway, like its predecessor offers an unlikely protagonist to get behind (a senile ex-cop instead of a scheming drunk lawyer), gleefully bathes itself in sleaze (a prostitution ring here instead of a strip club), and tempers its James M. Cain like noir sensibilities with some good old fashioned Midwestern idiocy. However, whereas The Ice Harvest’s Charlie Arglist seems to live very much for the moment, Gunther is clearly a man with some demons.

In this sense, Gunther has quite a bit in common with the book’s antagonist, crooked 1950s G.I. Wayne Ogden. Just as Gunther is willing to do whatever it takes to recover his lost loot (and, one can assume, his dignity), Ogden is hell-bent on getting revenge on his estranged wife, even going as far as to slip back into town using the name of his commanding officer. That the two cause untold pain and suffering to those around them despite their seemingly opposite alignment reinforces one of the untold rules of noir: there are no heroes.

While The Walkaway has a lot going for it, its structure is a mess. Time movements (between 1952 and 1979) are frequent and follow no fixed pattern. There are also no fewer than half a dozen focal characters (on top of plenty of supporting players – the names pile up), and sometimes, the perspective will shift within a chapter. This disorientation makes sense from Gunther’s point of view (he is battling senility, after all), but for a reader, it’s pure frustration.

Phillips also has a penchant for downer endings. While this too can be taken as a hallmark of the noir genre, the sense of futility in those final pages can really make you feel cheated. Then again, if The Ice Harvest didn’t end this way, The Walkaway would probably have no reason for being (and would, at the very least, have a different title).

All told, Phillips tells an interesting tale, but his work is still too slight and, in terms of structure, too sloppy to leave us craving more.

7.25/10

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Disgraced investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is hired by aging Swedish industrial magnate Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to discover which of his despicable relatives murdered his beloved niece Harriet 40 years ago. As Blomkvist’s investigation uncovers links to ritual murders, he is joined by Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), an expert computer hacker with a dark and troubled past.

For years, the words “American remake” were harbingers of a butchered adaptation of a foreign-language favorite. But as The Departed, Let Me In, and Insomnia have proven, Yankeefied versions of well-received films needn’t be substandard. The 2011 version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo certainly belongs in this grouping as well as both the cast, production values, and, above all, the director, make it worthy of, if not better than, both the original film and the source material.

In this case, the source material happens to be a wildly popular novel (reviewed here), the first in the late Steig Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. For the 2009 film adaptation, director  Niels Arden Oplev excised much of the book’s informational clutter and coaxed a dynamite performance out of Noomi Rapace in the titular role. The bar, in other words, was set quite high.

Fortunately, this could not have fallen into the hands of a better-suited director. From Se7en to Zodiac, David Fincher has mastered the thriller like no other, and his expert command of tension is fully on display here. Though there isn’t much action per say until the film’s last hour, the sense of menace grows and grows as Blomkvist and Salander burrow closer to the truth. And knowing exactly how things will play out plotwise does nothing to dissipate it.

Fincher is aided in his delivery by some breathtaking visuals. Snow-covered northern Sweden is frigid and pristine, a perfect thematic foil for the sordid doings of its inhabitants. These sights are paired with some edgy sounds courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Their version of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” blares over the opening credits, and while it is likely to enrage Zeppelin purists, it is a good fit for the film’s dark sensibilities.

From a casting standpoint, the remake’s biggest hurdle was measuring up to Rapace’s strong performance. Several big names auditioned for Salander, but the role ultimately fell to the decidedly un-Swedish Mara, last seen as the indirect impetus for the creation of Facebook in Fincher’s The Social Network. But Mara, nearly unrecognizable here, thoroughly owns this role. It’s more than just the jet black hair, the surprisingly convincing accent, the pseudo-Goth attire; it’s the way she embodies Salander’s silent fury. Though not her equal, the usually arrogant Craig adapts well to playing a more reserved character, and Plummer makes the most of a rare sympathetic turn (though one has to wonder if Max Von Sydow was simply unavailable).

All of the ingredients of a great film are here, and yet The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo disappoints in one key regard. As original director Oplev put it, "Why would they remake something when they can just go see the original?" For as faithful an adaptation as the film is, a strong sense of purpose is missing here. That, the sheer brutality depicted onscreen (feminists and animal lovers will probably want to stay away), and the slackening of tension once the central mystery are resolved nibble at the film’s credibility, but they aren’t big enough bites to derail this Scandinavian-accented thrill ride.

8.25