See How They Run
(Picture: 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved)A gruesome murder, a room filled with potential suspects, and a morass of grudges, feuds and motives for our sleuth to sift through. The blueprint for the whodunnit is so deeply embedded in our cultural consciousness – especially through Agatha Christie’s novels, adaptations and imitations – that it’s easy to dismiss it as cosy, predictable, maybe even a bit dull. “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” as cynical director Leo Kopernick – played by Adrien Brody – narrator of period murder mystery See How They Run, yawns in the film’s opening moments.
But that voiceover is just the movie’s first sleight of hand. After drawing attention to this creaky old formula (“You’ve got a dead body, a detective and then all the suspects rather conveniently end up in a remote country house together,” as one character says) it proceeds to gleefully play with everything we think we know about the genre.
