See How They Run review: Agatha Christie’s most famous mystery, but meta

mousetrap, Agatha Christie’s famous stage murder mystery that was never made into a movie. When Christie handed over the film rights to producer John Wolfe, she stipulated that the film could be made six months after the West End run ended. 70 years since its opening in 1952, mousetrap It is the longest-running play in history. Therefore, the film never materialized.

That trivia is a plot point see how they run, a small metahooda unit of games steeped in London theater lore. It’s also the origin story of the film itself, if you believe the story’s producer Damien Jones spins it in the production notes. When he discovered that he had thwarted him, he found a way not only to circumvent this obstacle, but to turn it to his advantage. about Create a whodunit, turning movie rights itself into one cog in a killing machine.

see how they run, written by Mark Chappell and directed by Tom George, turns Christy inside out and upside down, giggling at the dignified spectacle the process creates. It satirizes it despite leaning on the genre’s squeaky mechanics.It’s a movie joke, a pretty good one enlivened by a great cast. is knife out.

However, the setup is wonderfully wicked.on the occasion of mousetrapFor its 100th performance — in the real world, there are now over 27,500 performances — the cast, led by Richard “Dicky” Attenborough (Harris Dickinson), gathers for a party. Film producers Wolfe (Rhys Shearsmith) and Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody) are vicious blacklisted Hollywood directors hired by Wolfe to make a movie of the play. Extreme playwright Marvin Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo) is tasked with adapting the script. Theater impresario Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson) simmers on the sidelines. For various reasons, everyone is a little bit harsh, and Kopernick and Attenborough get into fistfights. At the end of the night, Kopernick appears dead on stage. Can the show go on?

Given the history of the production, the premise has a mischievous playfulness, and that’s before the police show up. Teaming up with employee Constable Stoker (Saoirse Ronan) to solve the case. Because the rest of the Homicide Squad focuses on the real world, the darker world. Rillington Place MurdersThis theaterland kill is kind of fun by comparison.

This wit and double-faced delicacy of detail — emphasizing the harmless silliness of the minutes while grounding them in real time and place — see how they run It’s one of the main pleasures of cinema. Rather than trying to figure out who the killer is, it’s more fun to guess which ones are caricatures of real people and which ones are cartoon inventions.

Photo: Parisa Tagizadeh/Searchlight Pictures

Several recent movie cameos star in this warped reality for hilarious and daring payoffs. The production design follows a similar line, capturing the opulence and opulence of 1950s London with stunningly authentic textures. (Producers’ opportunism strikes again: The film was shot during his COVID-19 pandemic, with some of London’s grandest theaters and hotels closed due to lockdown.) production is now accessible.)

see how they run It works better as a full-on comedy than as a murder mystery, but it fits neither format.Chappell’s script is filled with tasteful thorns, painful puns, and gently teasing character portrayals. A veteran director of British television his comedy, George knows how to set up a gag and pay off. But there’s a halted rhythm to it, and scenes sometimes run too long in the airless haze between jokes—a comedy that relies on chemistry between its cast to shoot in the midst of a pandemic. The hardest genre he must have been one.

The cast ends with the credits. As a charming and sincere stalker, Ronan performs perfectly timed comic bits and delivers the biggest laughs without being overbearing or character-breaking. It starts out as a joke — she takes notes on whatever anyone says, believing the case is solved after every interview — but in Ronan’s hands, it becomes an endearing kind of heroism.

Poho: Parisa Tagizadeh/Searchlight Pictures

Her lightness contrasts with Rockwell’s exhausted, mumbling Stoppard is out of Buddy Cop’s playbook, but Rockwell’s amusingly underrated turn perfectly complements Ronan’s. Stoppard just shrugs and allows hijinks to happen around him, and being such a stoic straight man is somehow funny.

Dickinson’s take on Attenborough is a riot, skewering a certain classy, ​​first-class man prejudice. The secondary cast is a string of British television and theater professional hitmen: Sian Clifford (free bag), Lucien Moussamati (game of thrones), Tim Key (various Alan Partridge projects), and Shirley Henderson (Harry Potter) can pull off adorable-yet-savage features in a few lines of space and look effortless.

see how they run A lark, a self-referential transmission of theatrical and cinematic virtuosity. The problem, like most larks of its kind, is to use self-mocking as a way out phrase. Narrated by Adrien Brody as the late director Kopernick, it disdainfully addresses the clichés and basic constructs of the whodunnit genre just before it hits the screen. His own basic Hollywood instincts are likewise ridiculed one moment and deployed the next. It’s no excuse to have a character point out the flaws in your movie. But that doesn’t nullify the enjoyment of the movie either. see how they run Not as smart as the creators think they are, and not as stupid as they sometimes pretend to be. There isn’t much to say about whodunits other than “Wouldn’t it be interesting if they existed in your world?” And yes, it will.

see how they run It hits theaters on September 16th.