See How They Run Movie Recommendation. Liked Knives Out? Enjoy the Agatha Christie modern, meta-spinoffs? Then See How They Run is definitely for you. You have to check it out. I loved every minute of it. Saoirse Ronan is a bright and shining star in this light-hearted romp. She is hilarious and her comedic timing is fantastic. And Sam Rockwell, as her straight man, is fantastic as well. The duo are fun to watch working together.
The movie has enough self-reverential brilliance to it that it doesn’t take itself seriously at all. The laughs in this one are everywhere. And the way it calls its own shot at the ending is utterly brilliant.
See How They Run Movie Recommendation Explanation
The movie begins in 1953 London. I wasn’t clear on this point at the outset, but over time I began to understand the larger context. It is the 100th performance of Agatha Christie’s play, The Mousetrap, and they are celebrating. Meanwhile, Leo Köpernick (played by Adrien Brody), a horrible director that is attempting to get the film rights to the play, tries to convince the play’s producer to give him the rights. But Köpernick’s drunken behavior at the party ends in a fist fight. Later, Köpernick is found dead backstage. Who would want him dead? I mean, other than everyone?
Inspector Stoppard and Constable Stalker (The “Inspector,” “Commissioner,” “Constable,” “Inspector,” “Commissioner,” “Constable” bit literally never got old.) arrive to investigate… but the Constable has absolutely no clue what she is doing and is ready to indict pretty much everyone with even the slightest hint of a motive. So, she did it then? Obviously not. Then it’s him? Don’t be crazy. And her penchant for wanting to arrest absolutely anyone with a hint of motive eventually ends up with Inspector in prison as a suspect at some point. Regardless, everyone in the theater is declared simultaneously a suspect, and potential future victim.
Stoppard and Stalker find a black book of addresses in Köpernick’s room at the Savoy, where the hotel manager informed them that he had heard a violent argument between the Mervyn, the screenwriter, and Köpernick. Apparently he had wanted an action-packed ending (which, he story-boarded, and cognizant viewers would realize ahead of time that it was the actual ending of the movie that we were being pitched in a fairly self-aware and thoroughly ironic way) and that wasn’t happening for an Agatha Christie treatment. But the producer actually remembers a plain woman coming to the hotel with Köpernick’s illegitimate son, John Woolf. Hrmm. Who is this plain woman?
When Stoppard and Stalker (come on, Stalker is a fantastic name for this character… who is literally stalking Stoppard the entire movie long) confront Woolf, he admits that he was blackmailed by Köpernick for digs at the Savoy, after he discovers that Woolf is having an affair with his assistant. Then Dennis, an usher at the theater gives a fairly generic description of a curious figure at the theater the night of Köpernick’s murder. We also learn that Spencer had in fact optioned out the rights to the play, but that Köpernick wouldn’t be able to create the film until after The Mousetrap stopped its run. Then Stalker later learns from Stoppard that his pregnant wife had left him when he learned that his to be child was another man’s. And when Stalker takes a very drunk Stoppard home, she sees a photo of his ex, and realizes that she too was a homely woman with glasses. SO OBVIOUSLY, Stalker must be the killer. (?!?) And it obviously must be so when she finds Stoppard’s ex-wife’s contact details in Köpernick’s black book. Hrm. Then, later that night, when Stoppard and Stalker go to a performance of The Mousetrap, Stalker is convinced when she sees him standing over a strangled Mervyn, the screenplay author, who was pushing for a more sedate ending to the movie. Never mind that it could have any number of people that had killed Mervyn who had left the theater at the same time. So Stalker knocks Stoppard unconscious and hauls him to jail.
Awaking in the jail cell – he’s accused of the murders. Stalker, being the “on it” sort of detective she hoped she’d be, has called for Joyce… you know, the mother of Köpernick’s son. BUT, as it turns out, she isn’t Stoppard’s ex-wife. I mean, other than that, Stalker was spot on! hahaha. But when Joyce mentions hearing the voice of the killer being something of a “village idiot’s” voice, Stoppard has an epiphanic realization about who the murderer has to be. But arriving at Dennis’ apartment, he finds Stalker already there! Chalk one up for the new guy.
Now, after all of the actors and crew of the show receive invitations to Agatha Christie’s home they find that they are not expected. The butler, Fellowes, is confused at their arrival. Which is when Dennis reveals his identity and holds them all at gunpoint. It turns out, that Dennis was the abused child, whose brother’s death inspired the writing of The Mousetrap originally by good ‘ol Agatha. I personally don’t remember ever having seen The Mousetrap before. So, I got nothing for you here. But Wikipedia? to the rescue:
“The play began life as a short radio play written as a birthday present for Queen Mary, the consort of King George V. It was broadcast on 30 May 1947 under the name Three Blind Mice starring Barry Morse. The story drew from the real-life case of Dennis O’Neill, who died after he and his brother Terence suffered extreme abuse while in the foster care of a Shropshire farmer and his wife in 1945.”
Aha! Alright. Now we are cooking with gas. So, Dennis, having felt taken advantage of, is done with it all. Got it. Dennis killed Köpernick and Mervyn Cocker-Norris in order to try and stop the play and also its follow-on movie that Köpernick was wanting to make. Dennis was fed up with the abuse he and the memory of his brother were having to suffer for the world’s “entertainment.”
Also, Dennis has captured Edana having assumed that he had captured Agatha Christie herself. But when Christie does arrive with tea for everyone, she has poisoned one of the cups, intended for Dennis. But when the ROUND TRAY – someone explain why she didn’t put his in the middle?? – gets rotated, and the poisoned drink is lost in the melee, it ends with Fellowes dead inadvertently. But then the movie devolves exactly into Köpernick’s vision for how his remake of The Mousetrap should go. Stoppard arrives and the shooting begins. A Molotov is chucked as a distraction… wait what? And then Agatha kills Dennis with a shovel (because yeah, of course, that happened). Towards the end we learn that Stoppard was hit in the exchange. But after the dust settles, Stalker passes her sergeant’s exam, and Stoppard receives the King’s Police and Fire Services Medal. And as the movie ends, the duo go and watch The Mousetrap together.
See How They Run Movie Recommendation
What I enjoyed about See How They Run is the clever word play and dismantling of the larger “whodunnit” genre. I have a good friend who, on a lark, recommend books for each other to read. And he recommended for me to read an Agatha Christie novel. (I think I recommended for him to read something crazy like… maybe A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Eggers. Maybe? I’ll have to ask him on the down-low to be sure.) Regardless, the book drove me to drink because of the way Christie used Dr James Sheppard as her narrator and made him as dumb as a brick in order to keep the audience completely in the dark through to the end. “BUT THAT IS OBVIOUSLY NOT HAPPENING” I kept yelling at the book, page after page.
Hilariously, we see that exact same stupidity going on here with the character of Stalker always jumping to the wrong assumptions. So much so she ends up putting her own partner in the clink. Which, for me, just illustrates the funny problem with the overly reaching whodunnit genre. It can’t be the children that were left out of the will that killed the rich grandfather because the motive is WAYYY too obvious. And it can’t be the help that killed the millionaire because they weren’t listed in his will, because that would make too much sense. As it turns out, it’s the visiting astronaut that killed him… because, weightlessness? I don’t know. It has to be the LEAST obvious person among the million people with a motive.
And Stoppard attempts to explain this to Stalker in the middle of the movie as she is jumping to her first conclusions. “It can’t be him, that’s way too obvious.” But from a raw police reporting standpoint…
You are reading that right – in this study, it said, that if the wife of a family died – 41% of the time, the husband was the murderer! hahah. Crazy. So, yeah, the police HAVE to look at the husband first. Got a kid in the mix that is acting strangely? 21% of the time it’s them. So, obviously, it would do them well to dig in a bit there. YOU DON’T START WITH THE ASTRONAUT. Just saying. Which is why I enjoyed the lampooning of this idea so very much. Regardless, I found it a good laugh if nothing else. Would love to hear your thoughts on the movie if you’ve had a chance to watch.
Edited by: CY