Review: See How They Run

Credit @JR Korpa

By Jonathan Moynihan

Everyone loves a whodunnit complete with a grizzly detective and society’s various rungs portrayed in the cast. 

Well, that is certainly true of Hollywood at the moment after the release of Glass Onion: A Knives Mystery, See How They Run, and the remakes of the old Agatha Christie films such as Death on the Nile. There is even a series on the BBC looking into Agatha Christie’s life. It seems we can’t get enough of posh people murdering one another in ever more intricate ways. 

See How They Run is every bit a classic murder-mystery. Set in 1950s London, it follows the haggard Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell with a lovely moustache), who plays a version of Christie’s infamous Hercule Poirot, and his inexperienced sidekick Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). The duo try to uncover who killed a member of the crew on the soon-to-be movie version of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Will I give away who did it? Of course not.

The movie has all the hallmarks of a Wes Anderson film, which is surprising given it is directed by Tom George (This Country, Defending the Guilty) as his first feature film. There are many split screens, and with Adrien Brody appearing too, you could be forgiven for imagining that it was actually directed by Anderson rather than a person more famous for depicting Britain in all its glory in This Country. However you do get the sense that the style doesn’t seem so sure of itself, the tone switching regularly between drama and farce. 

The cast is very impressive, even down to smaller roles. It includes, among others, Harris Dickinson (The King’s Man, Triangle of Sadness), Ruth Wilson (Locke) and David Oyelowo (Selma). The problem with a cast this big is that it feels as if some of the characters are wasted on some of these actors. Their limited screen time prevents them from really shining - Harris Dickinson’s pompous Richard Attenborough, for instance, is criminally wasted in such a silly role. 

An archetypal murder mystery, you won’t want to miss finding out who is guilty in See How They Run.