It is 1953 and the 100th performance of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is being celebrated at a lavish after-show party at a swish restaurant. However, all is not well amongst the company. Acclaimed producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith) has optioned the film rights to the popular whodunnit; but, according to a caveat cleverly inserted by Dame Agatha (Shirley Henderson) into the contract, filming cannot begin until six months after the end of the play’s theatrical run.
This is a major concern for theatre owner Petula “Choo” Spencer (Ruth Wilson), the cast and crew, who are understandably loath for the play to close. Nevertheless, brash American director Leo Kopernick (Adrian Brody) has arrived in London to direct the proposed film and is upsetting everyone with his appalling arrogance, ignorance and lack of empathy. So, when he is found dead, no-one is upset . . . until they realise that they are all now murder suspects.
Assigned to the case are Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell, bearing a more than passing resemblance to the rumpled ‘Inspector Mallory’ in the Father Brown TV series), a man battered physically and emotionally by his WWII army experience, and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) working on her first murder case. His world weariness and her enthusiasm to hone her sleuthing skills both confuse and complement the deductive process, as Police Commissioner Scott (Tim Key) piles on the pressure to solve the crime.
True to the Christie format, as investigations proceed and the corpse tally mounts, we realise that every character has a motive to kill another character. Indeed, this hyper-theatrical community veritably seethes with passions, jealousies and insecurities. The stellar cast clearly relish the opportunity to bring these characters to life in the sumptuous, glamorous world created for them by production designer Amanda McArthur and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux.
Because SEE HOW THEY RUN was shot during the Covid pandemic, the production company was granted access to the empty West End theatres, restaurants and other venues, where this film was shot, including the exterior of St. Martin’s Theatre where The Mousetrap is still playing, having re-opened post-Covid in May 2021.
Mark Chappell’s satirical screenplay cheekily references a range of murder mystery plays, not just Christie’s. Similarly, Chappell and editors Gary Dollner and Peter Lambert and cinematographer Jamie Ramsay play around with narration, flashbacks, split screens and the other annoying techniques that Kopernick has pompously and loudly decried early on.
SEE HOW THEY RUN is a thoroughly entertaining antidote to the pandemic and its ongoing aftermath. Coming in at 98 minutes in length, it actually left me wishing for one more shot of Constable Stalker in her Morris Minor police car. Classic!
Review by Tricia Youlden
Mostly in ENGLISH, and all the ITALIAN LANGUAGE scenes do not have ENGLISH SUBTITLES.