See How They Run (2022)

'See How They Run' is an extremely metatextual movie. The story, a period piece detective tale, concerns a murder behind the scenes at the West End production of the Agatha Christie play 'The Mousetrap' in 1953. 'The Moustrap' play is an adaptation of a Christie short story, which was adapted from a Christie radio play, which in turn was inspired by an actual murder case from 1945.

With rare exceptions such as the Covid lockdown, that play has been showing continuously in its original West End run since 1952. At more then 27,500 performances that is the longest continuous run of any play in recorded history. Ironically 'The Mousetrap' also has a reputation as being mediocre.

'The Mousetrap' has also never recived an English language film adaption, though there are Russian and Bangalories productions. According to this film there is a clause in the contract for the play that no film adaption can start production until six months after the close of the plays initial run. Thus more irony as the murder victim was involved in pre production for a film adaption.

The story concerns the efforts of a alcoholic police inspector (Sam Rockwell) and a talkie constable (Saorise Ronan) to solve the crime. The interplay of those two is the best thing about this movie. The rest of the solid cast play a mixture of historical chatacters, such as actor Richard Attenborough and producer John Wolfe, and fictional characters like Wolfe's secretary and the man hired to adapt the play for the screen. These fictional characters are often cast post racially, which is a bit of a distraction when the film has a subplot about mid century sexism but completely ignores contemporary racism.

It's a fun enough film, has some decent twists and turns, and certainly has a sense of humor about its self, being a comedy and all; though it plays the mystery elements fairly straight. Again metatextually there are wheels within wheels here, and you might miss that the movie tells you precisely how it is going to end early on. **1/2