MOVIES: See How They Run - Review

A smart, witty and inventive whodunnit that operates in a post Knives Out world, See How They Run sets out to tackle two markedly different mediums, film and theatre - head on, with a style to match - by killing a director on course to adapt Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap and having a mismatched pair of Inspector and Constable investigate the murder by interrogating the cast and crew.

Narrated by the ghost of the murdered director, Adrien Brody’s Leo Kopernick, See How They Run weaves a suspenseful tale of intrigue and questioning. The suspects include an all star cast of Ruth Wilson, Harris Dickinson, David Oyelowo and more besides. With Saorsie Ronan and Sam Rockwell investigating - it’s a stacked cast and everyone revels in the murder mystery format created here. It’s aware of the tropes - so confident it tells you how it’s going to go down from the start - and the pulpy crime aspects of it all only serve to make it more entertaining. This is a film that knows exactly what it is; there’s no growing pains - it’s the smoothest of smooth watches that flies by like a dream. You’ll feel like you’re watching a twenty five minute episode of a television program by the time the film is done.

The set design is immaculate and the post war era of London that Agatha Christie called her home is flawlessly recreated, and the costumes breath life into this world. Whilst there’s no Doctor Whos or Giant Alien Wasps - the film makes a bold move to characterise Christie herself with excellent results - there’s no Poriot, but Ronan and Rockwell’s Stalker and Stoppard feel every bit believable as characters he’d encounter. Stalker’s quirks make for some of the most entertaining line reading of the film - she is told repeatedly not to jump to conclusions and by the end, you’re annoyed at yourself for doing exactly what Stalker does - jump to conclusions, because the end result is nothing short of surprising.

It’s not quite as complex or as intricately plotted as the best of Christie’s work - the film revels more in poking fun at the cliches of the whodunit genre and the mediums in which it is presented through, but there’s a certain charm to See How They Run that makes it incredibly likeable - entirely affectionate with some funny laughs that are even funnier if you avoid the trailer. Its end result is something akin to Wes Anderson but not completely a cheaper copy - See How They Run feels freshly dripping with a voice of authenticity confident enough to call its own, despite all the genre homages baked within that are enough to call Knives Out positively restrained. 

Its traps that it fall into are few and far between - it does typically fall into that trap where it’s not quite as clever as it thinks it is and mistakes that calling out the tropes are akin to subverting them - but its confidence in what you’re given regardless of that is a sheer delight - and at the end, you’re almost left wanting to spend more time with these characters. Hopefully we get as many Stalker/Stoppard mysteries as Benoit Blanc and Hercule Poirot.