Starring: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody and Reece Shearsmith. Also, Ruth Wilson, Harris Dickinson, David Oyelowo
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Runtime: 98 mins. Reviewed in Sep 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This mystery, comedy-thriller tells the story of a film producer who visits the UK to adapt a highly successful London stage play for the cinema. A key member of his crew, who comes with him to London, dies unexpectedly, and the police are called in to investigate.
The film is a British-American film, not to be confused with a very different British-Australian movie of the same name, that was released in 1998. The script for this film was written by British screen-writer Mark Chappell.
George is an award-winning television director, with this his debut as a movie director. The movie features a large number of actors. The plot is projected as a classical whodunit, but it adopts an unusual format.
In the theatre district of West End, London, in the1950s, there are plans for a film version of the smash-hit stage play, The Mousetrap. The highly successful play attracts the attention of an American film producer (Shearsmith), who wants to adapt the play for cinema audiences. Leo Kopernick (Brody) is a famous Hollywood director, and he was scheduled to direct the film, but is found dead shortly after arrival in London. All work on the play after it’s 100th performance is halted when his untimely death occurs under highly suspicious circumstances.
It becomes apparent Kopernick was unpopular, and many of his colleagues wanted him gone. Indeed, a veritable army of likely suspects quickly surface.
Inspector Stoppard and Constable Stalker are recruited to investigate Kopernick’s murder. They want to do all they can to find the culprit, but don’t know exactly what to do, or where to turn. Stoppard (Rockwell) is a weary, respected policeman and Stalker (Ronan) is his ambitious helper. Stalker is fresh out of the Police Academy and is looking to prove her worth, and her excessive enthusiasm constantly annoys her boss. In conducting the investigation, both Stoppard and Stalker realise they are plying their trade in a grim theatre world that looks glamorous on the surface, but is not very pleasant underneath. Both find it difficult to come to grips with the culture in which they have to work, but they know that the world they have entered is risky and dangerous.
This is a smart, solidly-cast ensemble film, that reminds one very much of Wes Anderson-directed movies. It has the same quirky, imaginative, whimsical look, and characters in the film frequently talk and act in a spontaneous, slightly jilted way. The movie has the appearance of films such as The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
A comic tone accompanies the criminal happenings, and runs strongly through the film, and screen images are frequently partitioned into sections. The movie is scripted with smart and witty one-liners, and highly eccentric characters go about their everyday business in an attention-grabbing way.
Although the plot is about a murder, this quirky film stands well apart from the depictions of criminal intent and forays into the troubled, psychological nature of criminal minds that are well reflected in thriller films such as Maigret (2001).
The movie is satirically entertaining, and dips heavily into the surreal. Its oddness is well integrated into its eccentric format, and as noted before, models Anderson’s distinctive style in an interesting way. This is a movie less about characters being murdered than about how to kill a long-running play, such as The Mousetrap – lending hidden meaning to the title ‘See How They Run’.
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