SEE HOW THEY RUN — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

There’s historically a bit of a problem with star studded ensemble casts—which is to say, they always disappoint under the expectation of their star power. In the case of See How They Run, the movie poster highlights fully twelve people in the cast, but the star wattage is basically limited to Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, and David Oyelowo. Your mileage may vary with the rest of the cast, as with Ruth Wilson, or if you were a big fan of “Moaning Myrtle” in a few of the Harry Potter films, Shirley Henderson pops up in a delightful performance as Agatha Christie.

Which immediately brings me to my other point: I can remember when I first learned what “meta fiction” was, after having it defined in my own creative writing in a college class. At the time it was a gimmick not widely discussed, and it was a point of pride. Now, every writer and their mother seems to be making their work “meta” in one way or another, and See How They Run hops right on that bandwagon. Most of the time it’s mildly amusing, and to the film’s credit. it never crosses the line into annoying.

Still, there’s no getting around that this is a movie with a large ensemble cast that is clearly very amused with itself, which is rarely a recipe for success. What I can say for this example is that, at the very least, it’s not a failure.

See How They Run is a “whodunnit” regarding a murder amongst the people in or involved with an Agatha Christie play called The Mousetrap, running in 1950s London’s West End. They play is also a whodunnit, and of course director Tom George and writer Mark Chappell offer us a movie with cleverly knowing beats that mirror those of the play. There is some debate among the players as to how the play should be adapted into a film, and the initial murder victim figures prominently into the discussion.

Even the opening voiceover narrator turns out to be surprisingly relevant. See How They Run has relative unpredictability going for it; I don’t think it’s easy for the average viewer to suss out who the murderer is—and, as always in stories like this, there’s a veritable crowd of suspects. I just wish that opening voiceover didn’t go on for quite as long as it does, or the movie itself for that matter: this film has a slight editing problem, even at only 98 minutes in length. This is a kind of movie that would benefit from much tighter editing, and keeping it at an even 90 minutes would alone have made a notable difference. This is clearly intended as a comedy, and it gave me a great many chuckles, but there’s a few too many lulls between them.

Still, See How They Run has surprisingly artful cinematography for a film of its sort, and the performances are as good as you could ask for across the board. I do find myself wondering if this would even have been considered for production without the success of the far superior Knives Out, which has its own highly anticipated sequel coming this winter. See How They Run certainly has its own tone and sensibility, but it’s not particularly memorable either. I had a nice time with it, at least. It’s amusing enough.

Overall: B