Director: Tom George
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody
Year: 2022
See How They Run is about as “meh” as a movie can get and still be halfway fun, halfway likeable, halfway alright. It’s a Hercule Poirot whodunit mixed with a Wes Anderson stage play, a blend of classic & intriguing with cheeky & stylized, but still somehow not a film that’s exciting in any way. In fact, it’s about as fun as a Friday night alone reading an Agatha Christie book, which isn’t bad in & of itself, but isn’t what you’d rather be doing.
In London, in the 1950s, Mousetrap is all the rage on the stage, the story becoming hit theatre, and even on its way to becoming hit cinema. But when art mirrors life too much and someone is killed backstage and left onstage, the party is put on hold. Inspector Stoppard & Constable Stocker are on the job, deducing who killed the poor victim, why they did it, and what the tale behind the murder is, because there’s always more to learn and a few twists to reveal.
So, it’s a whodunit that makes fun of whodunits, a movie about a play, it has flashbacks that jab at having flashbacks, and the entire 90 minutes is a flat circle that you can’t escape no matter how hard you try. That doesn’t make for a great cinematic experience, and that’s what audiences get, an OK time but nothing worthwhile. This isn’t film, it’s frolic, and sure that’s a little fun, but you get bored real quick, and even the short runtime starts feeling far too long. I loved Saoirse-like-inertia, she’s amazing, Sam was nice as well, but they weren’t enough, even though they worked as a duo. The direction was amateur, very amateur, which makes perfect sense, Tom is just getting started, and it’ll take him some time to understand what not to do. And it’s not like the result was horrible; See How They Run went moderately well, when what we wanted smashing.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆