Excluding Shakespeare, who after all benefits from a 300-year head start and perhaps greater talent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must hold the record as the most frequently and fully adapted writer in history. Practically since he first created the immortal Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, his novels and stories have inspired hundreds of versions, first on the stage, then on radio, television, and naturally, motion pictures. As with Shakespeare's characters - Hamlet is the best example - somehow no amount of tinkering, experimentation, bungling, or sheer foolishness in those translations from one medium to another damages the achievement of the author.

Guy Ritchie once again directs the newest Holmes movie, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," following quite closely his initial radical interpretation of Conan Doyle's material in his 2009 "Sherlock Holmes." He reunites Robert Downey, Jr. as a most unlikely Sherlock and Jude Law as his friend, helper, and chronicler, Dr. Watson, and leads them to confront Holmes's greatest enemy, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris), "the Napoleon of crime."

Ritchie also pretty much repeats the methods of characterization, the visual techniques, and the general tone of the previous work, ending up with something closely resembling the mixture as before. Unshaven, slovenly, and dissolute, Downey's Holmes differs markedly from the lean, angular, intense detective of traditional interpretations. In his performance the memorable phrases and muted ironies become a series of offhand wisecracks, sometimes mumbled, sometimes delivered at breakneck speed. The director also overdoes Holmes's famously eccentric taste in furnishings, replacing all the beloved objects - the Stradivarius, the Persian slipper, the Tantalus and the Gasogene, the scientific apparatus and so on - with a ridiculous jungle, complete with wild animals, that Holmes establishes in his digs at 221B Baker Street.

Like the first movie, "The Game of Shadows" departs entirely from the original fictional plots and situations, inventing the threat of a European war created by a series of terrorist bombings in public places. While some blame Anarchists, Holmes discerns the hand of Professor Moriarty, who plans to set France and Germany against each other so that he can profit from selling arms to both sides (a version of what actually happened in World War I). With the help of a gypsy fortune teller named Simza (Noomi Rapace), Holmes and Watson journey all over Europe to foil Moriarty's scheme.

Their quest turns the business of mystery and detection into a series of grand adventures, complete with the sorts of stunts, tricks, and pyrotechnics that propel the plot of any spectacular Hollywood blockbuster. Holmes engages in unarmed combat with at least a dozen adversaries, besting them with dazzling speed and astonishing acrobatics; he and Watson fire a variety of weapons, from machine pistols to cannons, at scores of enemies, escaping harm in every violent encounter. Like the original, this Holmes also shows himself a master of disguise, impersonating a Chinese opium addict, a Victorian lady, and - quite wonderfully - blending into the furniture in a costume of his own invention, a suit of "urban camouflage."

The director again deploys a whole arsenal of motion variations, showing Holmes working out in his mind the moves he will use against his foes in slow motion and stop motion, then repeating them in fast motion. He also juxtaposes flashbacks with flash forwards, which enlivens, sometimes comically, the various sequences of hand-to-hand combat, bomb throwing, and narrow escapes from certain destruction.

Despite its exaggeration and the idiosyncratic interpretation of the great detective, "Game of Shadows" generally succeeds on its own merits. The relationship between Holmes and Watson, important in the stories, continues, albeit comically, in the performances of Downey and Law, who work smoothly and effortlessly together. The movie reflects the rich panorama of late Victorian England, simply glowing with its highly detailed depiction of the attire, the furnishings, the urban and rural settings, even the transport (Holmes drives a noisy, smelly horseless carriage). One word of warning: the very large, very corpulent Stephen Fry plays Holmes's brother Mycroft, who appears virtually naked in one scene, not a pretty sight for any dedicated Sherlockian, or anyone else, to look upon.