Brief Story Line
Set in the year 1953 London, the play titled The Mousetrap written by Agatha Christie had been quite a success. A party was held to celebrate where some people that included the play's producer Petula (Ruth Wilson - His Dark Materials TV series, A Streetcar Named Desire etc), the main stars Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson - Where the Crawdads Sing, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil etc) and his wife Sheila (Pearl Chanda - War of the Worlds TV series etc) attended. During this party, other people also came such as producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith - In the Earth etc) who wanted to adapt the play into a movie, along with the director Leo (Adrien Brody - Blonde, The Pianist etc), the screenwriter Mervyn (David Oyelowo - Chaos Walking, Selma etc) and Woolf's wife Edana (Sian Clifford - Fleabag TV series etc).
However, during the party, a person was later found murdered. So Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Vice etc) was assigned to investigate the case where he was assisted by the inexperience Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan - Little Women, The Grand Budapest Hotel etc).
So how would the story conclude? You can find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I have said many times earlier that I like this whodunit type where we would be kept guessing on the murderer and/or how it was done (if it was a closed room case). In this film, the mystery was not truly sophisticated but it was enough to make me think for a while. One thing that set this apart from the other similar movies were the rather humorous approach of the investigation due to the persons in charge were not the totally serious kind.
Our main protagonist was a police inspector who had personal issues of his own and was really not keen on investigating with such inexperienced police. I was not able to recognize Sam Rockwell in here despite already saw him few times before, not sure if it was because of his different appearance here. But he was pretty convincing as such inspector. Meanwhile Saoirse Ronan looked so mature and to my surprise was able to provide a comedic performance being a too enthusiastic investigator. I chuckled so many times looking at her behavior, her pun jokes or her jumping to conclusion.
In addition to the names I mentioned above, there were also other support characters such as Woolf's assistant Ann (Pippa Bennett-Warner - Chloe TV series etc), the theater's usher Dennis (Charlie Cooper - This Country TV series etc), Mervyn's roommate Gio (Jacob Fortune Lloyd - The Queen's Gambit mini series etc) and few others. It was pretty fun also looking at various real life characters in here, though obviously had to be played by different actors and actresses as it was set in 1950s. The setting was pretty nice, supported by the quite good costume and make up department. Oh and the multiple scenes shown on screen where it was divided by two or four was interesting as we could see more than one thing happening at the same time. Btw the film was directed by Tom George in his feature film debut.
The final act was a little bit surprising, but the revealing of the culprit was not done in too detail and not satisfying enough for me. However as a whole, this movie was still pretty enjoyable, especially due to the strongly felt English humor. The ending was OK, but the murder victim was the part that quite shocked me as I did not see it coming. Overall this is a humorous and light whodunit movie that poked fun on some real life persons in the past and having a mystery solving that should be entertaining enough for fans of this genre. It is quite well received by critics too. So if you are interested in this kind of comedy mystery, you could give it a try as it is available in Disney+ at the moment, less than 2 months of its theatrical release in the US.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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