I am not sure what made 2022 the year of the lighthearted whodunit, but between this film, Confess, Fletch, and Glass Onion we clearly have ourselves the making of a miniature renaissance. I certainly am not complaining!
In much the same way Confess, Fletch was first and foremost a vehicle for Jon Hamm to walk around and wisecrack, See How They Run is a vehicle for Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan to do the same. The two of them are a delight to watch, and the film is at its best when it is just letting them riff off each other.
The film does not do itself any favors with its figurative (and later literal) deputizing of Agatha Christie [1] — the mystery is not particularly interesting, and the coterie of potential subjects are more used as comic relief than as actual suspects. (You are invited — and rewarded — to guess the subject, which we of course loved, even if the killer's identity is not quite the point.)
This is not high cinema: this is B-tier entertainment, and a good time at that. Come in for ninety minutes of solid performances and a few good laughs, and you will not be disappointed.
I was unaware until after finishing the film that The Mousetrap is such a successful and long-running play, which of course recontextualizes a lot of the meta-y parts of the film! ↩︎
★★★★
