Murder is, by and large, not a funny business since killing does not generally make for guffaw-laden, or even whimsically giggly, storytelling.
But in the hands of See How They Run, written by Mark Chappell and directed by Tom George, murder is gently hilarious and farcically rich every step of the red herring-draped, clue-saturated way and an escapist delight for the world-weary soul.
It isn’t quite as clever or indeed funny 2019’s Knives Out but nevertheless, it has a great deal going for it as it affectionately and amusingly skewers the whodunnit genre, specifically that highly-successful version wrought by the prodigious talent that was Agatha Christie, a writer of such singular talent that she is, the modern resurgence of crime novels aside, the person pretty much everyone thinks of when they think of murder mysteries.
Where See How They Run falls particularly on the Christie spectrum is in its placing in 1953 just after the author’s spectacularly long-running The Mousetrap has opened at the Ambassador theatre, with the play chalking up 100 shows, a major milestone which the cast and crew, which includes real life couple Richard Attenborough (Harry Dickinson) and Sheila Sims (Pearl Chanda) and fictional producer Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson) celebrate with gusto, wholly unaware that as they are partaking in cake and champagne that someone is being murdered in the costuming area.
That someone, and this is no spoiler with the trailer making it violently clear who dies and kicks off the energetically fun sleuthing, is thoroughly unlikable American director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), the man who has been tasked with bringing The Mousetrap to the stage if only he, the screenwriter Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo) and producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith) can ever agree on a working script.
Which is, highly unlikely since Köpernick is set on making The Mousetrap adaptation, redolent with Christie’s trademark Britishness, the kind of murderously violent film that is more gruesome than genteel, while Cocker-Norris is most manifestly not.
There is no love lost between Cocker-Norris and Köpernick, nor between Attenborough and the director who is a sleazy ladies man who seems to think he can woo Sims sufficiently to notch her up as another of his conquests.
She’s far too clever and pre-possessed for that, and far too much in love with her husband, and he with her, for that to ever work but it does mean that Köpernick manages to chalk up yet another detractor right before he shuffles off this mortal coil in the most ghastly and bloody of ways.
He is the type of victim that all manner of people could have quite happily killed and so when world-weary detective, Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) – as the narrator the film, Köpernick sagely notes with some amusement, that the person in charge of the murder investigation must always be of the seen-it-all variety and so it comes to pass in See How They Run which has a great deal of fun with all manner of crime genre tropes – arrives to interview the cast and crew of the play, and the theatre staff including usher Dennis (Charlie Cooper), he is not even slightly short of suspects.
While they are all immediately corralled in the theatre as the tropes demand, they are let loose to go back to their lives, with excitably enthusiastic policeperson, Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan who is in sparklingly engaging form) and Stoppard doing their best to sort through the clues and turn them into workable leads.
Well, truth be told, it’s largely up to Stalker, who all bright-eyed, optimistic expectation, is thrilled to be working on the case with a legend such as Stoppard; of course, Stoppard, being as world weary as he is, and prone to more than a few drinks on a very regular basis, ends up needing more shepherding than Stalker, brought to life with achingly sweet vulnerability and whippet-smart intelligence by Ronan wo absolutely nails the part of someone eager to succeed whose puppy dog zeal hides some major real world challenges.
She is, in many ways, the beating heart and mind of See How They Run which is light, fun and frothy yes, but also an arch commentary on some trenchant social issues of the time such as the way in which women are often sidelined despite often being the ones who actually get things done.
Case in point is all the mystery solving which fills See How They Run, pretty much all of it powered by Stalker’s eye for detail and ability to put two and two together and get four (well, eventually; as even she admits, she does tend to overthink things though when her mind puts the pieces together, she does it superlatively well, saving the day in the process) and her eagerness to not accept the obvious as the answer.
She brings life, zest and humanity to the film which visually has a very Wes Anderson flair to it, using its 1950s locale well to engender a whimsically silly, escapist air which persists even when things turn very serious indeed as they do in the final act when everyone ends up at Agatha Christie’s (Shirley Henderson) home, for the great unveiling of the killer which takes place in typically Christie-an fashion.
Well, almost; quite how it all goes down must be left to the watching because while it observes the final act trope, it also has a huge amount of fun molding it to its own highly-amusing design, with See How They Run playing out, as it begins, with a knowing sense that it knows how these kinds of mysteries are meant to go down.
That is the fun of See How They Run – it takes the tropes, features them all but makes of them what it will, either skewering them or affectionately but parodically observing them, using characters who are mostly cardboard cutouts but very well done at that, and a lead character in the ensemble whose eagerness more than makes up for the cynical see-it-all-before of her partner.
As the narrator warns us at the start, we have seen it all before, but See How They Run, while it is not as clever or substantial as it likely hopes to be, makes something lightly fresh and fun of it all, simultaneously a love letter to the crime genre as defined by Agatha Christie while setting itself up as a silly romp that entertains mightily and with verve, delivering up mystery solving with glee, whimsy and lighthearted hilarity that wittily reminds us that while murder itself may not funny, the solving of it most certainly can be.