Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Tom George
Written by Mark Chappell
Music by Daniel Pemberton

Theatrical release 2022
Disney Plus streaming 2023

CAST:

Sam Rockwell – Inspector Stoppard
Saoirse Ronan – Constable Stalker
Adrien Brody – Leo Köpernick, American film director
David Oyelowo – Mervyn Cocker-Norris, screenwriter
Reece Shearsmith- John Woolfe, film producer
Ruth Wilson- Petula Spencer
Tim Key- Police Commissioner Harold Scott
Charlie Cooper- Dennis Corrigan
Pearl Chanda- Sylivia Sim
Harris Dickenson – Richard Attenborough
Gregory Cox – Major Metcalf in the play
Jacob Fortune-Lloyd- Gio, Mervyn’s boyfriend
Shirley Henderson- Agatha Christie
Paul Chahidi- Fellowes, Christie’s butler
Lucian Msamati- Max Mallowan, millionaire

Agatha Christie. In the last year we’ve seen Death On The Nile which starred a ridiculous False Moustache as Poirot, with Emma Mackay, Tom Bateman, Arnie Hammer, French & Saunders and also Kenneth Branagh who directed and acted, but was obscured by False Moustache in the leading role.

Then Christmas brought out the equally glossy and highly acclaimed Knives Out: The Glass Onion. OK, Christie’s name was not on it, but it was derived / inspired / ripped off from her Ten Little (N-word / I-word / Soldiers) concept. Stick ‘em all on an island and start killing them. Obviously it had a stellar cast: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson and so on.  We thought it was noisy and over-expensive with very little merit, and I never bothered to review it.

See How They Run is a different take altogether, and easily bests both the above as entertainment. It’s based around The Mousetrap, the Agatha Christie play now in its 70^th year of continuous running in London. It opened in November 1952. The Mousetrap was originally called Three Blind Mice but Christie had to change the title because there was another play called that. This film takes the next line of the song (which appears in the play). The cast is now changed annually- previously some actors passed a decade in their roles. David Raven played Major Metcalf 4575 times. Ten million tickets have been sold in London and around five hundred actors have been in the cast. The play opened at The Ambassador Theatre in London, then in 1974 moved next door to the St Martin’s Theatre without breaking its run. The film was partially made in the latter. The play ends with the audience being asked never to reveal the ending … who done it. This film ends with the same exhortation, and I’ll follow it and avoid plot spoilers.

The background is true. Christie refused to allow the original short story Three Blind Mice to be published in the UK while the play was running, and stipulated that no film could be made until the West End production had been finished for six months.

The film is set in 1953 at the celebration of the play’s 100^th performance, and we see auditorium shots of the play (and a few lines). John Woolfe has bought the rights to produce a film version (which requires the play to have ended for six months).  They have been sold / set up by the play’s impresario producer, Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson).

Woolfe has hired an alcoholic American director, Leo Köpernick (Adrian Brody), and a flamboyantly gay British screenwriter, Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo).

The two fall out badly because Köpernick wants a dramatic and violent ending to the film version, while Cocker-Norris believes they should stick with the Christie denoument.

At the 100^th party, Köpernick leches at Sylvia Sim (Pearl Chanda), and is knocked down by her husband, Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickenson). Sims and Attenborough really were the lead roles in 1953. Köpernick is murdered and the body put on stage. Will the play have to close? The entire cast are suspect, as are the impresario, producer and screen writer, all of whom will benefit, because then the film can be made.

Enter our unlikely detective duo, the world-weary, gin-swilling Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and the assiduous talkative Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). From here the theatrical in-jokes abound.

Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound parodies the Christie whodunit formula of The Mousetrap. They make no bones about it. Quote.

“He was a real hound, Inspector!”

To Inspector Stoppard

They mention other inspectors, Looke and Priestley who could help on the case, but Priestley is an inspector who … wait for it … hasn’t called. They are away dealing with the Rillington Place Murders. So, Richard Attenborough was the serial killer in the film derived from it, 10 Rillington Place, and two of the names in Köpernicke’s address book are Beryl and Geraldine, the victims in the real event and in the film.

Constable Stalker takes her name from the famed chief of police in Manchester, John Stalker. Köpernicke’s name is ‘copper + nick’ as in ‘You’re nicked!’

I am sure the script abounds with in-jokes, many of which I failed to get. Never having seen The Mousetrap doesn’t help. The IMDB points out that the dentist name plates Stalker looks at while trying to find Inspector Stoppard are those of characters from Poirot novels. They add that Stalker asks the Savoy Hotel concierge where in France he’s from and he replies, ‘Belgium.’ The Belgian Hercule Poirot was always correcting people who thought he was French.

Some I spotted. The Richard Attenborough character says the play is ‘not exactly Hamlet’ and the play-within-a-play in Hamlet is The Murder of Gonzago, which Hamlet retitles The Mousetrap. Inspector Stoppard also quotes Hamlet, ‘the play’s the thing.’

I guess Wes Anderson is an inspiration. They use flashbacks (with Mervyn, the screenwriter character saying firmly that he can’t abide flashbacks) and use split-screen, both in twos and fours. Adrien Brody (Köpernick,) and Saoirse Ronan (Stalker) were both in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Brody and Ronan were in 2021’s The French Dispatch and the split screens remind me of that.

The cars are fun. The little blue Ford (it’s either a Prefect, or the slightly better Anglia) is one of the least likely cop cars ever. Let’s be really nitpicking though and point out that the Bermuda blue and white police car paintwork on Stalker’s Morris Minor “Panda” is late 1960s at the earliest. Let’s be even worse and point out that the 100th performance of The Mousetrap would have been early in1953 and this Ford Prefect / Anglia was introduced in September 1953. Even sillier, that particular blue was probably when it was re-named Ford Popular in 1959. Sorry, I spent two teen summers working in a motor wholesaler’s warehouse.

I don’t want to go further with the plot, suffice it to say Agatha Christie appears too.

Rockwell and Ronan are a wonderful new detective double act. We enjoyed every minute of it.