FILM

USA 2011 129 mins Dir: Guy Ritchie Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Stephen Fry, Rachel McAdams, Jared Harris, Kelly Reilly

We're a very long way from Arthur Conan Doyle here. But if that doesn't bother you, the good news is that this sequel turns out to be Guy Ritchie's most enjoyable film in years, refining the approach of his first bash at Holmes to deliver a lovingly staged period combination of the homoerotic buddy movie and the globetrotting Bond flick - complete with a villain who never quite manages to polish off his foe when given ample opportunity to do so.

Said villain is, of course, the dastardly Moriarty, played with icy determination by Jared Harris. In Ritchie's steampunk 19th century, Moriarty is behind a series of anarchist bombings that only the wired and increasingly dishevelled Holmes (Downey Jr) is able to connect. But first, he has to distract Watson (Law) from his wedding. When that fails, he hurls the poor chap's unfortunate new bride (Reilly) from a speeding train and - just in case you don't geddit - turns up in Watson's carriage in drag. Noomi Rapace assumes thankless female lead duties as a Romany fortune teller, in order to facilitate a bunch of the director's familiar gypsy gags (My Big Fat Gypsy Blockbuster, anyone?).

Ritchie's usual arsenal of flashbacks, slo-mo sequences and fast rewinds are put to good use here, often illustrating Holmes's thought processes as he anticipates several moves ahead (cue: laboured chess metaphor). Stephen Fry camps things up a bit as the great freelance detective's politically-connected brother Mycroft, who amusingly persists in referring to Holmes as 'Shirley'. Be warned that the increasingly rotund Fry also gets a nude scene, with only a handful of Austin Powers-style props protecting us from the full monty. (Robin Askew)

Copyright Robin Askew 2011