‘See How They Run’ movie review: A sparkling tribute to Agatha Christie

Whodunits are all the time jolly and See How They Run is a delightfully meta tribute to the queen of crime, Dame Agatha Christie. The movie opens in 1953 London at a glittering celebration celebrating the 100 ^th present of Christie’s play, The Mousetrap.

A philistine Hollywood director, Leo Köpernick (a high notch Adrien Brody), who desires to adapt the play into a movie, disparagingly talks of the conventions of a whodunit and is promptly killed for his pains. Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) are placed on the case.

Simply as Köpernick mentioned, the least likeable character is killed and there’s no dearth of suspects. We realise that Köpernick had made improper advances on the main woman, Sheila Sim (Pearl Chanda), which had her husband and lead actor Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) attacking him. The sleazy director was blackmailing producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith). There’s additionally a mysterious, plain woman with glasses, who visits Köpernick with a baby. Köpernick’s violent quarrel with the pretentious playwright Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo) on the ending of the play needs to be thought-about as effectively.

The producer of the play, Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson), has optioned the movie rights to Woolf, below a contract that the movie can’t be made till six months after the play’s run. The usher, Dennis (Charlie Cooper), gives a obscure description of somebody in a trench coat and hat appearing “suspiciously”.

Like in all Christie whodunits, or at the least diversifications, See How They Run too ends with the suspects gathered in an remoted nation manor — Agatha Christie’s (Shirley Henderson) no much less.

Whodunit followers have a lot to get pleasure from within the movie, from the inspector troubled by an previous struggle wound to throwaways just like the names of the dentists, Henry Morley and Norman Gale, who’re dentists within the Christie novels, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe and Loss of life within the Air. There’s additionally point out of Stymphalean birds, which is a brief story by Christie, and a personality saying “Belgian not French”, referencing Christie’s egg-headed detective, Hercule Poirot.

Even the title Stoppard is a nod at playwright Tom Stoppard’s The Actual Inspector Hound, a one-act play that includes two theatre critics who get entangled in a rustic home homicide, which mirrors a play being staged there. The title in fact is from the nursery rhyme, ‘ Three Blind Mice’, and the title of radio play and quick story The Mousetrap relies on.

Even for many who are usually not whodunit or Christie nerds, See How They Run gives a well-mounted, glowing murder-mystery supported by a wonderful forged and peppered with enjoyable ripostes.

See How They Run is at the moment streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.