SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
An action-packed battle of wits worth taking with older teens.
Should You Watch It?
You get nearly nonstop action, a suspenseful mystery, and a satisfying battle of wits between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. The script is better constructed than the first movie, and Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are even more entertaining together as Holmes and Watson.
The cost is real. Some violence is intense, including torture, assassinations, poisonings, explosions, gunfire, and falls from great heights. Brief foul language, double entendres, male nudity played for comedy, saloon suggestiveness, drunkenness, opium references, and pagan elements also require discernment.
The film’s moral center is clear: good confronts evil through intelligence, courage, sacrifice, and loyal friendship. Take older teens and adults who can handle intense action; keep younger or sensitive viewers away.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESIn 1891, Sherlock Holmes investigates a chain of bombings, deaths, and scandals that he believes connects to the ruthless Professor Moriarty. Moriarty is pursuing wealth and power through a plan that could ignite a world war.
When Moriarty threatens Dr. Watson and Watson’s bride, Mary, Holmes springs into action. With Watson and a gypsy woman whose brother has disappeared, Holmes follows the clues from France to Germany and Switzerland while Moriarty stays one step ahead.
Is It Any Good?
Four stars means this is top-tier entertainment within its genre. The movie is intense, exciting, and highly enjoyable, with a suspenseful storyline built around a strong battle of wits.
The script is better constructed than the first film. Downey and Law make an especially entertaining Holmes-and-Watson team, and the action with Moriarty and his henchmen provides plenty of thrills. The movie could be shorter, but its conclusion is great and should please Sherlock Holmes purists and viewers familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories.
The Worldview
The film presents a strong moral struggle between good and evil. Holmes overtly opposes Moriarty’s ruthlessness, while goodness, intelligence, courage, sacrifice, and loyal friendship drive the heroes. A Christian chapel wedding, a loyal husband, heroic rescues, self-sacrifice, patriotic elements, and business portrayed as a force that can unite people across nationalities all support the movie’s moral framework.
The film also includes pagan references, pagan drug use, Tarot cards, and Holmes’s experiments with adrenaline. Moriarty’s criminal enterprises and assassination plots are clearly condemned, but the story’s moral strengths are accompanied by these spiritual and ethical complications. The film also includes alcohol and drunkenness, opium references, and a detective using disguises and chemical experiments.
The story’s central question is how courage and sacrifice can confront evil. Scripture says, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Content Summary
Strong moral worldview exposing and fighting ruthless villain with goodness, intelligence, courage, sacrifice, and loyal friendship, with a brief wedding scene in a Christian chapel, heroic husband is loyal to his wife, hero saves damsels in distress, heroes save friend’s life, hero offers up himself to stop villain, with strong patriotic elements and capitalist elements where heroes are trying to stop evil man from taking over several industries and companies by murder and other schemes and businessman makes toast that business transcends political differences and unites people of different nationalities, marred by some strong but implied pagan references and pagan drug use and a use of adrenaline, plus hero visiting gypsy woman uses Tarot cards to reveal what his investigation has revealed to him so far but he’s really working off clues and a letter he’s found; five obscenities (two “d” words and three uses of “bastard”) and one “My God” light exclamatory profanity; strong, sometimes intense, sometimes slightly bloody action violence includes martial arts fighting, punching, shooting, people thrown off train, man falls off second story, villain uses large hook tied to ceiling to impale hero’s shoulder and twist hook to get hero to talk, chase scenes, explosions, man assassinated, attempted assassination, woman poisoned to death, two men poisoned to death with small darts, soldiers fire artillery canons at heroes dashing through woods, villains fire Gatling gun at heroes, falls from great heights; a few innuendoes and men in raucous saloon gawk at two women covered in old-fashioned underwear who swing from a suspended swing; upper male nudity, plus rear male nudity in one scene as man in his own house wears no clothes in front of woman but she looks away and objects are placed strategically so nothing else explicit shows; alcohol use and drunkenness, and man drinks embalming fluid or formaldehyde; smoking, hero experiments with adrenaline to heighten his reaction time, which eventually also re-starts his heart at an important point, and Chinese man appears to be smoking opium on London street, plus newspaper refers to opium trader’s death; and, manipulation by villain, villain engaged in criminal enterprises and assassination plots, detective wears women’s clothes to secretly board train and save male friend and his bride, and detective does chemical experiments.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
Holmes confronts evil with intelligence, courage, and sacrifice. What does it look like to overcome evil with good in your own life?
Romans 12:21 · Proverbs 24:25Watson remains loyal to Holmes even when the danger is severe. How can friendship involve both courage and wise boundaries?
Proverbs 17:17 · Ecclesiastes 4:9–10Moriarty pursues wealth and power by manipulating people and planning violence. What warnings does Scripture give about the love of money and the desire for power?
1 Timothy 6:9–10 · Mark 10:42–45The film includes pagan references, Tarot cards, and opium use. How should Christians think about spiritual practices and substances that promise power or escape?
Deuteronomy 18:10–12 · Ephesians 5:15–18The Final Word
This is exciting, clever entertainment with a strong moral center and an excellent Holmes-and-Watson partnership. Its intense violence and brief crude, suggestive, and pagan content make it a choice for older teens and adults, not young children. For your family, the answer is WORTH THE TRIP — AGES 14 AND UP.
