Tonight's Movie: See How They Run (2022)

It was looking like a fairly bleak fall, in terms of new movies, when SEE HOW THEY RUN (2022) popped onto my radar screen. My attention was immediately caught by a trailer with the appealing actress Saoirse Ronan and the period London setting.

SEE HOW THEY RUN is a comedic murder mystery which takes place in the London's West End in the early '50s; more specifically, it's centered around the original theatrical production of Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP. To which I must add that I had no idea Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim (A CANTERBURY TALE) were in the original cast!

I found the film's concept particularly enjoyable as, like many tourists, I've seen the London production of THE MOUSETRAP, which has now been running for seven decades; in my case, I saw it on a college trip to London in the early '80s.

Adrien Brody plays U.S. movie director Leo Kopernick, who intends to film THE MOUSETRAP from a screenplay by Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo). They're a bit stymied by the fact that the movie contractually can't be made until the play closes -- and it shows no signs of closing soon! However, that might be a good thing as they can't agree on the script. Of course, the inside joke for viewers in the know is that the thing will never close, rendering all the arguing moot!

Kopernick, in fact, is a pretty unlikeable fellow who ends up dead in THE MOUSETRAP's costume department in the movie's opening minutes. Whodunit?! It's up to Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (Ronan) to find out.

SEE HOW THEY RUN, written by Mark Chappell and directed by Tom George, isn't entirely successful, but overall I found it a fun watch.

Running through the down sides first, the movie gets overly silly in the late going, particularly regarding the Agatha Christie (Shirley Henderson) character, and the mixture of characters based on real people (Harris Dickinson and Pearl Chanda as Attenborough and Sim) with fictional is a bit distracting.

I was also pulled out of the story by the colorblind casting, wondering how realistic the characters played by Oyelowo and Pippa Bennett-Warner were -- although I have the impression there was less segregation in the UK than in the U.S. in that era, so maybe it works?

Finally, Sam Rockwell has many fans but I felt he underplayed so much as the alcoholic inspector that he was dull. I would have liked a detective with a bit more "oomph" and a lot less drinking, though he does have some good moments as Ronan's straight man.

That's the extent of my complaints. On the positive side of things, Ronan is quite adorable as the earnest constable, who writes everything down in her notebook, and she's also not quite as silly as it appears from the trailer. I enjoyed her tremendously, and since she's onscreen a majority of the time, it works! It's particularly fun since she plays a film fan, given to murmuring comments such as "Rex Harrison, wonderful actor" in the middle of her investigatory questioning.

The movie also has a good time with some clever "meta" concepts. I just about choked on my popcorn laughing when a character complained he hated flashbacks...in a flashback! The movie is filled with little moments like that which are quite entertaining. The creative editing, with multiple perspectives onscreen at the same time, also gives the movie a little something extra which is distinctively different.

And it's only 98 minutes long! With so many movies these days dragging things out for 2-1/2 hours or so, a compact hour-and-a-half-plus film was delightful; the movie never felt like it was going on too long and didn't know when to stop.

SEE HOW THEY RUN was attractively filmed by Jamie D. Ramsay.

Parental Advisory: This film is rated PG-13. There's a dead body (or two...or three), but it's easy to look away, and there are some mildly inappropriate moments such as the wrong sketch making it in the director's movie storyboards. There is also a bit of cussing. Overall, it's a fairly mild PG-13, as these things go these days, and age 13 seems just about right.

All in all, SEE HOW THEY RUN was a fun "popcorn movie" which provided a pleasant hour and half "at the movies."

Previous reviews of Saoirse Ronan films: BROOKLYN (2015), LADYBIRD (2017), and LITTLE WOMEN (2019).

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