See How They Run (2022)

In 1953 London, two puzzled cops get caught in Christie's Mousetrap

Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) detecting in See How They Run

See How They Run (2022)

London’s West End.  1953.  Rather unexpectedly, Agatha Christie’s mystery play The Mousetrap has just given its 100th performance.  Theater critics hadn’t exactly raved when the show opened some three months earlier; but tickets for the novelist’s gimmicky whodunit are going fast.  It looks like a solid run is in the offing.  (IRL, Christie estimated the show would run a mere eight months; in fact, it’s still running after more than 27,500 performances).

To celebrate that night’s milestone, the play’s coolly realistic producer, impresario Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson) tosses a backstage party for the assembled cast and crew, calmly suggesting that they just might be in a long-running hit.

This Mousetrap cast is led by Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson), affectionately known in British showbiz circles as “Dickie”.  His pretty wife Sheila Sim (Pearl Chanda) is also in the cast and is as cagily self-protective as her esteemed husband.  (Attenborough enjoyed a long career on stage and in movies before becoming a celebrated director, most notably of 1982’s Gandhi.)

Among the celebrants is British movie producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), who’s negotiating hard for film rights, and has brought in crude, slimy American director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) to help seal the deal.  Köpernick merrily joins the evening’s celebration, announcing he’s eager to start shooting.

All that’s slowing him down is stubborn screenwriter Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), also a party guest, who refuses to give the director the action-packed script of his dreams.  That’s because the mayhem Köpernick wants to put on screen, and has already storyboarded, figures nowhere in The Mousetrap.

Mid-celebration, one of the attendees is murdered backstage.  Soon after the corpse is discovered, Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) arrives with his naive, eager beaver trainee, Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan).  The veteran Stoppard is a disheveled, seen-it-all drunk who barely takes these prissy theater folk seriously.

Stalker, on the other hand, bent on proving herself, furiously scribbles in her notebook and seizes on every tenuous clue.  Far too soon, she will march toward a “suspect” to make an arrest before Stoppard can tell her, No, you don’t even have a proper motive yet.

What works surprisingly well here is the brazen reliance on mystery cliches – cheating spouses, shady dealmaking for a movie (when Christie has made it known she doesn’t want The Mousetrap filmed), as well as a character haunted by childhood trauma who could be looking for payback. 

As we watch flimsy “clues” being set up to suggest motives for the murder, Mark Chappell’s winking script (sprinkled with clever theatrical puns) clearly invites us to doubt them.  As any viable suspicion evaporates before our eyes, we conduct our own investigation as Stoppard and Stalker’s goes so loopily awry.

There’s a skillful screenwriting trick at work in the apparently maladroit pairing of the weary cop Stoppard and the idealistic newcomer Stalker.   (Do those names have the ring of a movie sequel?  I sincerely hope so.)

Stoppard is seasoned enough to surmise that the killer is likely among the partygoers.  Stalker ludicrously jumps to false conclusions because she thinks they’ll demonstrate her budding detecting acumen.

The movie’s clever ploy is to make them succeed in spite of their lapses.  He can spot a feasible clue or suspect as long as he stays sober, which he finds hard to do.  She in her bumbling persistence keeps coming up with leads that eventually steer him, the more seasoned of the two, closer to the actual culprit.

When they finally reveal what each has come up with, you’re in for a surprise.  I guarantee you won’t have guessed before they do who the killer is.

Sheila (Pearl Chanda) and “Dickie” (Harris Dickinson) are glamorous suspects in See How They Run

See How They Run’s director, Tom George, and cinematographer, Jamie Ramsay, keep the performances watchable through split screens, eye-popping shots of the bright sets and shimmering costumes, and, crucially, by pumping up the deliberately arch, silly acting.

Brody’s character, the money-grubbing director, is both oily and comic, way too thick in laying on his “charm”.  And Oyelowo has a fine time sending up a vain screenwriter who doesn’t want his precious words tampered with.

The rest of the cast is gamely Noel Cowardish, and as the script takes deceptive turns, Ms. Christie herself (Shirley Henderson) turns up, and we see that not only can The Queen of Crime write, but she also fully understands how murder weapons can hit their mark.

What keeps it all moving is the sharply delineated Rockwell and Ronan teamwork.  Her wide-eyed “discoveries” are timed like an earnest apprentice’s mistakes, but also with the wonder of a young woman who’s slowly getting wise to herself.

Rockwell’s Stoppard proves he hasn’t lost his touch by the end, calling up a fierce physical daring once the case takes on urgent life, as the real clues start tumbling into place.

Just when you think he’s going to get soused one more time, he rises to the occasion, turns into an action hero and brings the movie barreling to its surprising conclusion. 

By the end I wanted both these sleuths to keep running and running.