Set in London’s West End, See How They Run is being given a big push by Disney, who want to sell it as the next Knives Out. It’s not quite as weighty (or plausible) as Rian Johnson’s whodunnit, but on the plus side, it’s a gazillion times smarter and wittier than Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile, offers a puzzle worth solving and is super-cosy. Despite seeing it in a miserably cold screening room, I felt snug as a bug throughout.
It’s the 1950s and Saoirse Ronan is nerdy, inexperienced Constable Stalker, assigned to help world-weary, war-wounded Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell), handle the murder of Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), a US producer who, we discover, was desperate to turn the popular play, The Mousetrap, into a Hollywood-friendly movie (Leo wanted more guns, bromance and lashings of Hank Williams).
