User Reviews

I defy anybody to come out of this movie without a broad smile. This is the sort of movie that I would vote for the People's Choice award in the Toronto International Film Festival. But it wasn't included in the last year's TIFF and I voted instead for a Peter O'Toole's gem. But I digress.

The movie opens with "Sway" (which seems to be a popular choice for musical background - I've heard it only recently in another movie) which sets a jovial, relaxing mood (entirely compatible with a murder mystery, just in case you object). As a murder mystery, "Crime is our business" is not among the most brilliant of Agatha Christie's prolific works. However, the gentle, warm sense of humour infused by the French movie makers renders it into such a delightful gem.

It wouldn't be necessary to go into the plot other than mentioning that you'll get the usual ingredients of a murder mystery – Gothic mansion, ominous looking estate, sinister family, greed, lust, jealousy and all such wonderful stuff. The suspense and plot twists are serviceable but, as I said, not particularly brilliant. What brightens the entire movie is a retired couple of snoops, with the husband fully surrendered to stoicism but the wife still restless for action.

Catherine Frot is probably among the most loved French actresses today and that does not require much evidence beyond watching one of her movies, such as "Me and my sister" in which she teams up with Isabelle Huppert. In "Crime", she is in her best form, especially under the imaginative direction. And you don't even need to speak French to see that. One of the best, hilarious scenes is a distance shot out of hearing range, when she explains, in full animation, to a police inspector what she has discovered about the murder. And it is a crime (can't resist that) if one neglects to give full recognition to adorable Andre Dussollier ("Lemming", "Coeurs") playing the man behind the woman. Wrapped in all the witty mirth of this couple is a love story that warms your very soul.

Three years after the first outing for the Beresfords, By The Pricking Of My Thumb, Pascal Thomas brings back the impeccable Catherine Frot and Andre Dussollier for Crime Is Our Business, his third and best adaptation of Agatha Christie. This is our old friend the murder without a corpse - there IS a corpse, of course, but only Prudence's aunt witnessed the actual murder which, in a nod to Rear Window, she witnessed taking place in a railway carriage as her own train passed in the other direction. In the fullness of time the corpse does turn up and the murderer is exposed but what makes the movie - as it did the first - is the wonderful rapport between the two leads, punctuated with wisecracks in the style of Bill Powell and Myrna Loy. If it's unadulterated entertainment you're after - to say nothing of arguably the best reading of the Holmes-Watson joke that went round the globe around ten years ago - then this one has your name on it. Bring on the DVD.