How can 'See How They Run' waste the great Sam Rockwell? It's a mystery. A meta-mystery
The phrase “too clever by half” seems insufficient to describe “See How They Run,” a meta mystery film with an outstanding cast and an exhausting sense of self-satisfaction.
Admittedly, too clever by whole doesn’t have the same catchy ring. But it fits. Though maybe that’s too kind a description for a film that doesn’t know what to do with the great Sam Rockwell.
Saoirse Ronan’s performance is a powerful mitigating factor, on the other hand, making up for the misfire with Rockwell.
Written by Mark Chappell and directed by Tom George, it’s a murder mystery that takes place around Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” early in its decades-long run on the West End.
In fact, the mystery part begins at a party for the 100th performance in 1953.
Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody), a pushy Hollywood director and our narrator, wants to make a film version but runs into several roadblocks, the biggest of which is Christie’s insistence that no movie be made until the play has run its course.
(Spoiler alert: It’s still playing, in 2022.)
The least likable character gets killed first, Kopernick says, and after arguing and flirting and falling into food, he manages to get himself murdered. (This does not stop his narration.)
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A film that's too meta for it's own good, or anyone else's
Finding out whodunit against the backdrop of a whodunit is the basic set-up, though that’s not the only meta madness. By the time “See How They Run” is done it will have incorporated “The Mousetrap” into its own story, despite spending much of its running time taking shots at it.
Scotland Yard sends Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell, doing a British accent), a slovenly, sleepy-eyed drunk, to investigate. Constable Stalker (Ronan), an inexperienced, movie-mad officer, is assigned as his partner, to Stoppard’s chagrin.
Is Stalker a funny name for someone whose job entails watching people? Maybe. Is calling your main character Stoppard when the playwright Tom Stoppard wrote the well-received “Mousetrap” spoof “The Real Inspector Hound” funnier? A little, I guess.
All meta, all the time, seems to be the working theory here.
Richard Attenborough and John Woolf were, of course, real people
There are any number of suspects. Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson), the actor starring in “The Mousetrap,” is one of them. So is John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), who produced “The African Queen,” which Stalker can quote chapter and verse.
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Attenborough and Woolf were real people, of course. They’re mixed in with fictional characters like Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), an absurdly arrogant writer, and Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson), the embodiment of the show-must-go-on producer.
It’s all zany. Christie herself shows up, played by Shirley Henderson, once the action moves to Christie’s Berkshire home for a mysterious dinner party.
At this point the plot is mirroring that of “The Mousetrap,” as well as some of the daffy action sequences Kopernick dreamed up to spice up the action of the play.
Brilliant actors and wacky comedy are not enough to save this film
Ronan proves herself more than adept at wacky comedy. The key, of course, is to play it straight, the crazier the scenario the better. She’s always good; it’s nice to see her being good at something so silly.
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Rockwell is a brilliant actor — my favorite living actor, in fact. (If you’ve never seen “Moon,” do, the sooner the better.) Stoppard has his problems, and it’s understandable that underplaying the character is a valid option. But Rockwell goes so far in that direction he veers into what seems like apathy. The character kind of stumbles through life, yes. But Rockwell is a gifted-enough actor to play that in an interesting way. Here, he just doesn’t.
It’s all very British, enough so they should serve tea and crumpets during screenings. Some of it is also entertaining. Just not enough.
'See How They Run' 2.5 stars
Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★
Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★
Director: Tom George.
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell, Adrien Brody.
Rating: PG-13 for some violence/bloody images and a sexual reference.
Note: In theaters Sept. 16.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'See How They Run' movie review: Saoirse Ronan shines in a so-so film
