Coup de theater, the new whodunit laboriously inspired by Agatha Christie – Exit Mag

It’s not Agatha Christie who wants: inspired by La Sourcière, Spectacular turn of events by Tom George bores us by dint of multiplying the references or giving rise to the slightest suspense. So sad…

There are films whose story is more interesting than the film itself. This is the case of this Spectacular turn of events (“Watch them flee” in English), the first film by a director of series for the BBC who ran out of inspiration during the last confinements. Two lazy (and opportunistic) producers then wonder which piece ofAgatha Christie still adapt to the cinema in the wake of Kenneth Brannagh. The Mousetrap sure ! Who has never left the theaters of London since… 1952! Problem: the adaptation contract forbade it, Agatha Christie having taken great care at the time not to sell the rights to her play for the big screen less than six months after the end of the performances (as it is elsewhere recalled in the film). Re-problem: the performances never stopped! Instead, we ask a lambda screenwriter to make the nickname Agatha Christie in place of Agatha Christie… So there will be a murder, but inside a troupe playing… The Mousetrap.

Isn’t Agatha Christie who wants…

Who killed ? We don’t care a bit, as this new plot is laborious, and spends most of its time multiplying references and winks to show us how much the authors know their Agatha inside out. Re-re-re-problem: the five minutes of The Mousetrap that we see on the stage of the theater are worth much more than the entire film. Neat, multiplying splitscreens, Tom George does a nice job as a technician for his first feature film. But he just forgets the essential: that we are taken by the plot! As investigative protagonists, Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan do the job but their characters are downright dull and repetitive (he always drunk, she always alone beside the plate), just like the worn-out allusions to Queen Christie (“ don’t jump to conclusions“). The appearance of the real-fake Agatha at the end of the film ends up making us smile in this never-entertaining entertainment, barely good enough to pass the time of an asymptomatic Covid afternoon. Better wait to take a look at it on your velvet sofa with a cup of teaand rediscover the beautiful Harris Dickinson – underemployed here – as the main character of Without filter by Ruben Ostlund, the Palme d’Or which comes out on September 28th. And that we warmly recommend.

Spectacular turn of events by Tom George (See how they runGB, 1h38) with Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell, Adrian Brody (who dies immediately), Harris Dickinson… Released on September 14.