Sherlock 2, aka The-setup-is-done-time-to-go-to-work

Saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows yesterday with bigscary and negativeq.  Really, really enjoyed it, just all in all far surperior to the first one.

It was kind of like X-Men 2.  The first movie was purely for character setup, and that it's out of the way, it's full tilt for fun, action, and breathless set-pieces.

There was even a little more on-screen detecting.  And a lot more, ah, "subtextual" nods befitting the world's most classic bromance. 

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law ham it up enormously, clearly having a fabulous time.  Jared Harris is a fantastic Moriarty, brilliant, classy and yet utterly sinister, Stephen Fry was born to play Mycroft Holmes, and it's great to see Noomi Rapace in a movie based on a book that isn't all about how rape-is-awful-so-how-about-some-more-rape?

Guy Ritchie is a little too fond of both slow-mo and quick-cuts.  While I appreciate the skill that went into choreographing the action scenes, sometimes I'm not sure why directors spend so much time setting up a visual piece only to quick-cut all over the place, or set up a smoothly flowing motion only to randomly slow it down so the audience can see in intimate detail all the particles of dirt make-up added to an actor's face.  

In the end though, the better bits of the movie overcome this handily, and the last 10 minutes could not have been done better.  Highly recc'd.