At a party to celebrate the 100th performance of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the director of the planned film version is murdered. Seasoned Detective Inspector Sam Rockwell and new PC Saoirse Ronan are on the case.
This is a great idea, taking the cliches from a classic staged whodunnit and applying them to the whodunnit investigation that Rockwell and Ronan are undertaking. It would be nice to say that this works, but sadly the negatives rather outweigh the plus points. Everyone in this is great fun, particularly Brodie as the victim, forever returning in flashbacks and Rockwell, sort of Sam Spade-ish, but it is Roman who is genuinely a real comedy find and rather walks away with this.
The down side is firstly, that the whodunnit element is pretty predictable and frankly rather meh, although in many respects this doesn't really matter. What really spoils here is that the film isn't silly or indeed funny enough to pull its intentions off. Silly - it needed to be more like say 'Murder by Death', but crucially the humour in the script is far too often just not there. There are small laughs to be found, largely coming from Ronan, but it just isn't enough. Far from awful, just disappointing when you consider how great this could have been.
This is a great idea, taking the cliches from a classic staged whodunnit and applying them to the whodunnit investigation that Rockwell and Ronan are undertaking. It would be nice to say that this works, but sadly the negatives rather outweigh the plus points. Everyone in this is great fun, particularly Brodie as the victim, forever returning in flashbacks and Rockwell, sort of Sam Spade-ish, but it is Roman who is genuinely a real comedy find and rather walks away with this.
The down side is firstly, that the whodunnit element is pretty predictable and frankly rather meh, although in many respects this doesn't really matter. What really spoils here is that the film isn't silly or indeed funny enough to pull its intentions off. Silly - it needed to be more like say 'Murder by Death', but crucially the humour in the script is far too often just not there. There are small laughs to be found, largely coming from Ronan, but it just isn't enough. Far from awful, just disappointing when you consider how great this could have been.