I won't attempt to guess the actual goals and motives of Guy Ritchie and his team in making the film, but I feel that the aesthetic choices around the weapons make a powerful and somewhat surprising statement about modern warfare.
One could say the film presents violence as the aesthetically pleasing pursuit of our heroes. Both Watson and Holmes kill or injure others through hand-to-hand combat and the firing of guns. But in Holmes' first fight, he actually doesn't hurt any of his opponents any more than he has to in order to defend himself. And when Watson shoots it is always in self-defense. And maybe it's true that violence on a small, person-to-person scale is favorably portrayed in the film.
But I think that the film does not present war and large-scale weaponry in a favorable light. The moment that stood out to me is when Holmes, Watson, Sim and their friends are running away from the weapons plant where Moriarty has just tortured Holmes. As they run, the German forces at the plant prepare an enormous cannon of some sort to fire at the fleeing group.
We see Holmes and Watson in slow motion, from the side, and as they slow almost to stillness all sounds fade until we only hear their breath. The human faces, beating hearts, and rapid breath of the fragile human body comes into sharp focus. This imagery and aural effect contrasts sharply with shots of the preparation and firing of the enormous new weapon. In those shots we see the minutiae of the machinery, the tiny and seemingly insignificant cogs, wheels, pressure-releasers, levers, switches, that will unleash a horrific explosion. We hear the tiny clicks and whirrs of the pieces snapping into place. And then they fire.
Those fragile bodies we've grown to care about receive the impact and slowly, ever so slowly, soar through the air. They look so small. They look so vulnerable.
They land, recover, and they're all right. But the cinematography and editing of that sequence create an enemy for us in addition to Moriarty: weapons and war themselves. The heartlessness of machinery is matched with Moriarty's heartlessness. His cold calculations are like the tiny clicks and whirrs of the deadly machines. Holmes's mind could be seen as mechanical as it is so brilliantly logical, but his relationship with Watson and his constant concern about preserving life and eliminating evil mean that he is the human one.
And his humanity is all the more emphasized in the film by his many injuries. He gets a bruise on his face in the first few minutes of the movie, then gets cut on the face, tortured by Moriarty, etc. By the final confrontation between the two he is much the worse for wear and looks it. He is a human. Brilliant, but human, with a human heart, human compassion, and a fragile human body. Moriarty is unblemished, polished, mechanical.
Moriarty is the owner/manufacturer of weapons and the would-be creator of war. Holmes stops him through his understanding of the human psyche and of human behavior.
I'm so encouraged by the fact of this action-adventure film with an anti-war, anti-weaponry message whispering in its heart. Some may disagree with my conclusions, of course, but I will cling to them optimistically.
