See How They Run

Whodunit films have been a Hollywood mainstay for many decades, and although they typically have similar formats in which to work from, they are always intriguing to attempt at solving whodunits. Recently we saw "Knives Out", and then subsequently a remake of Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile". Well, now we have "See How They Run" in the offing to try to figure out, yes, you guessed it, whodunit. 

In the West End of 1950's London, plans for a movie version of a smash-hit play come to an abrupt halt after, a pivotal member of the crew is murdered. When world-weary Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and eager rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) take on the case, the two find themselves thrown into a puzzling whodunit within the glamorously sordid theater underground, investigating the mysterious homicide at their own peril. Interestingly, the murder occurred at the end of the 100th performance of a play, based on an Agatha Christie novel called "The Mousetrap", so is this life imitating art? The suspects are aplenty including John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), Dickie Attenborough (Harris Dickinson), Mervyn Cocker Norris (David Oyelowo), Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson), etc. 

Others to round out the cast are Adrien Brody as Leo Kopernick, Charlie Cooper as Dennis Corrigan, Pippa Bennett-Warner as Ann Saville, Pearl Chanda as Sheila Sim, Sian Clifford as Edana Romney, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Gio and Shirley Henderson as Dame. 

This was adequately directed by a newcomer to the feature film biz, Tom George (TV and shorts). Certainly when a filmmaker is handed a project as a new director, expectations are typically not very high. And, although this direction needed a bit more polish, it was still, again,t being a new director, better than I or anyone could've expected. There were a few places of stiffness and the staging did involve some issues, but all in all, again considering, this was a well helmed film. It was written by Mark Chappell ("The Rat Pack" '16) plus TV. Again, this writer, like the director, being a virtual newbie to feature films, the story, at times, had the tendency to veer off and become a bit choppy with a couple of continuity issues. The film had that 'film noir' look to it along with a voice over narrative, which one might expect considering the time it was set in, but with the flashbacks along with the story, it got a bit bogged down. After approximately half the film,the story did pick up, and soon became the film it was searching for. I believe that both the director and writer are talented filmmakers, and given more work (especially more TV, specials, etc), they will only improve so as to be able to handle feature films. Both Rockwell and Ronan were great as a very droll inspector and eager constable respectively. 

I never tire of a whodunit, because I usually never guess correctly of who did it, as with this film, but this simply needed a bit more polish. The whole idea of incorporating a Christie play with this film as a whodunit is an intriguing premise, and with Rockwell and Ronan leading the cast, you can't go wrong. 

Out of 4 Stars: 2.5                                       Rated: PG-13                                          108mins.