Searchlight Pictures
I can’t say exactly when it was that I was first exposed to the works of Agatha Christie, but I think it was watching a middle school play of And Then There Were None when I was in middle school myself. But of course, it’s hard to ignore that she essentially wrote the 20th century version of murder mysteries to the point that subverting a subversion of a Christie play is already old hat by now.
More recent movies like Knives Out follow in the same sort of tradition, with attempts at little twists and turns to stand out from the crowd, or Kenneth Branagh’s more recent straightforward adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. But we all know the tropes and cliches by now.
See How They Run comes from director Mark George and writer Mark Chappell with a title that’s reminiscent of a Christie tale, as it’s directly referencing a nursery rhyme. The movie follows a very Wes Anderson sort of cast as we start the film hearing from slimy director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) complaining about murder mystery cliches and watch him get into a fight at a party.
The party is celebrating the 100th performance of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap at the West End, which did indeed run (and still runs) there. At the party are stars of the play (who really were these people and a real life couple) Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) and Sheila Sim (Pearl Chanda). Theater director Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson) is also in attendance, as is Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), the hired screenwriter for a planned film adaptation and John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith) the producer for the adaptation and a real life figure. Of course in the real world, there never was an English language film version of the very theatre-oriented play. (Editor’s Note: Contractually, as long as the play continues to run in London, there will be no film adaptation.)
Searchlight Pictures
After Leo gets killed by a mysterious figure, we get introduced to police Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell, doing an oddly uninspired understated British accent) and his new assigned partner Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan, simply doing her Irish accent perhaps more so than usual). Stoppard is long suffering and a bit of a drunken lazybones, while Stalker is the overly excited nerdy type — they’re the original odd couple! Although the cliched nature of their pairing aside, the two do have a good rapport.
Naturally, we follow these two as they try to solve the case and yes, perhaps, learn from each other? The actual twists and turns of the mystery work well enough, but the fact that it’s all about an Agatha Christie play only eventually serves to be window dressing — it’s not really commenting on anything about mysteries, despite the initial ‘dead man talking about the genre’ hook (which fades away soon enough).
It’s hard to miss entirely when you have a cast this talented, and the mystery is decent enough so that it’s not boring or difficult to get through. It’s more of an issue that because of the talent involved and the aspirations of the setup that it really felt like it could’ve been something a bit more elevated and unique. But it’s a fun movie and I always enjoy seeing Saorise Ronan in anything, especially when she can use her real accent. Sam Rockwell is also fun too, even if his accent choice is more questionable. A decent midranked sort of mystery comedy.
See How They Run has a run time of 1 hour 38 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some violence/bloody images and a sexual reference.
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