For director of ‘Sherlock,’ it’s elementary

By John Horn

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES

The signature action scene in the soon-to-be-released “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” unfolds in a fusillade in a forest, as high-speed cameras zooming at 70 mph capture ammunition ripping through trees and flesh in real time. It’s the type of mayhem, initially so intense that the film faced an R rating, that you would find only in a movie directed by Guy Ritchie.

Until two years ago, Ritchie was known only to a select cinema buff crowd for his stylish, low-budget British gangster movies — “Snatch,” “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Revolver” and “RockNRolla.” He burst into the mainstream, and into Hollywood’s loftiest ranks, by directing Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in the 2009 megahit “Sherlock Holmes,” which grossed more than $524 million worldwide.

Though the first “Sherlock” was a blockbuster, in many ways it was Ritchie’s most constrained production, short on some of his distinctive flourishes. The key set piece in the film, for instance, transpired on London Bridge, a sequence heavy on computer effects but light on novelty — the sort of staging you might come across in any number of studio action movies.

But as the new detective movie should prove, Ritchie has in many ways reverted to his earliest form, injecting the follow-up with more of his signature cinematic touches.

Audiences appear even more intrigued with the sequel than with the original, as pre-release surveys suggest “A Game of Shadows” could be December’s all-conquering hit, with stronger early interest than for “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.” And because Ritchie’s film won’t be competing against a juggernaut such as “Avatar,” as was the case with “Sherlock Holmes,” “A Game of Shadows” could play far into the new year. The PG-13 film, which reunites Downey as Holmes and Law as Dr. Watson, arrives in theaters Dec. 16.

“I much prefer it to the first movie,” Ritchie said a day after jetting through Southern California’s windstorms in a terrifying flight that left the 43-year-old director (traveling with model Jacqui Ainsley and their newborn son) so discomfited that he was gasping for breath. “I just enjoyed the experience more.”

When Warner Bros. hired Ritchie to pump life into Arthur Conan Doyle’s 19th century literary creation, he was an unusual choice. His 2008 film “RockNRolla” was only a minor respite from his critical and commercial disappointments “Revolver” (2005) and “Swept Away” (2002), the latter starring his then-wife, Madonna. And “Sherlock Holmes” would cost about 10 times that of his most expensive production, the $18-million “RockNRolla.” Producer Lionel Wigram, who worked with director David Yates, another unconventional choice, on the studio’s “Harry Potter” franchise, nevertheless thought it was a marriage made in moviemaking heaven.

The new movie, budgeted at $125 million, is set in 1891 London, and international unrest is mounting, due largely to mysterious bombings. Holmes is pursuing the “Napoleon of crime,” an academic named Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) who may be trying to foment, and then make a fortune from, a world war.