See How They Run

Hav­ing enjoyed an unin­ter­rupt­ed run from 1952 until the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic forced its tem­po­rary clo­sure in March 2020, The Mouse­trap is a Lon­don insti­tu­tion, as much as beefeaters or Padding­ton Bear. While it’s Agatha Christie’s Her­cule Poirot and Miss Marple that have tend­ed to dom­i­nate film and tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tions, The Mouse­trap pro­vides the inspi­ra­tion for Tom George’s See How They Run, direct­ed by Tom George. This peri­od mys­tery-com­e­dy also draws on the work of Wes Ander­son, and indeed stars two of his recur­ring col­lab­o­ra­tors in Saoirse Ronan and Adrien Brody.

Mur­der most foul afflicts an afflu­ent group of Lon­don luvvies, who have come togeth­er as The Mouse­trap – cel­e­brat­ing its 100^th per­for­mance – pre­pares to move from stage to screen. Black­list­ed by Hol­ly­wood due to his Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, Leo Köper­nick (Adrien Brody) is tasked with direct­ing the film ver­sion of The Mouse­trap, but can’t come to an agree­ment on the script with pre­ten­tious screen­writer Mervyn Cock­er-Nor­ris (David Oyelowo). After a bust-up with Richard Atten­bor­ough (Har­ris Dick­in­son) at the recep­tion held for the show’s 100^th per­for­mance, Köper­nick turns up dead, and it’s up to the beleagured Inspec­tor Stop­pard (Sam Rock­well) and his eager new part­ner Con­sta­ble Stalk­er (Saoirse Ronan) to crack the case.

This star­ry cast is round­ed out by a few more famil­iar faces – there’s Ruth Wil­son (play­ing a tac­i­turn the­atre own­er), Reece Shear­smith (the film pro­duc­er try­ing to keep it all togeth­er), Char­lie Coop­er (the put-upon the­atre ush­er) and a few oth­er stars whose pres­ence will be omit­ted here per the twee instruc­tions of Sam Rockwell’s char­ac­ter to ​“keep the mys­tery alive” – a direct plea to the audi­ence at the end of the film. The fact the screen­writer felt it nec­es­sary to instruct the audi­ence to not spoil the plot sug­gests a dire lack of faith in the cin­e­ma-going pub­lic, which is per­haps a sign of the times.

Nev­er­the­less, the grat­ing tone of See How They Run extends far beyond its end­ing. The film is a fair­ly rote mur­der mys­tery, and its com­e­dy feels in keep­ing with its 1950s set­ting – that is to say, out­dat­ed and boor­ish. Rock­well appears to be sleep­walk­ing through the script, while Ronan does her best with a thin­ly sketched, bum­bling char­ac­ter. She might have a great affin­i­ty for com­e­dy, but it’s wast­ed in this lack­lus­ter excuse for a crime caper.

Fail­ing to cap­ture the wit or intel­li­gence of Christie, See How They Run instead relies on tired stereo­types about women and gay men, and in an ensem­ble full of tal­ent­ed actors, there’s bare­ly a com­pelling per­for­mance to be found. Dickinson’s Dick­ie Atten­bor­ough impres­sion is amus­ing, but it feels mis­placed in a film where most of the oth­er char­ac­ters are com­plete­ly fic­tion­al. This is a grab bag of lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ences, and fails to be as com­pelling or charm­ing as any of them.