See How They Run is a cinematic spoof about the theatrical genre typified - and here exemplified - by Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, the world’s longest running play, involving a murder investigated by a Police Inspector played by Sam Rockwell and a female Constable played by Saoirse Ronan alongside a large cast of theatrical ‘suspects’. I will go to see any film with either of these two leads. Sam Rockwell is using here, I think, his first and immaculate ‘English’ accent and I loved him in many movies, especially Vice, 3 Billboards, Moon, JoJo Rabbit and Galaxy Quest. Is there anything he cannot do? And of course Saoirse Ronan is equally versatile in Mary Queen of Scots, Brooklyn, Lady Bird, Byzantium and Hannah, not to mention her Wes Anderton roles. They brought all their craft, energy and humanity to these roles, and this movie is handsomely staged, dressed, lit and filmed.
But….
If you are going to call your lead Policeman Stoppard, and even reference Tom Stoppard’s play The Real Inspector Hound (another London theatre-based crime spoof) you had better polish your script until it gleams with invention and sparkles with wit.
Sadly, this does not, despite the best efforts of Rockwell and Ronan, plus Adrien Brody and David Oyelowo and a showcase of British actors; Harry Dickinson (Where The Crawdads Sing), Ruth Wilson, very well known to lovers of Brit TV for Luther and His Dark Materials) Reece Shearsmith, (The League of Gentlemen), Sian Clifford (Life After Life and Fleabag, and Shirley Henderson (Happy Valley, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Goblet of Fire and both Trainspotting movies) and hurrah for that. But sadly none of them have very much to do.
There are plot elements that simply fall away, and the supporting cast have little to work with. Is this a snide critique of Agatha Christie, who some say had less skill at writing people than plots? Or is it just about the genre in general? I do not know and do not care.
If you want to spoof meta-theatre you have to work very hard to get anywhere near Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation and if you want to reference Tom Stoppard scalpel skills you have to do much better than this.
I was mildly entertained and there were a few genuine laughs (mainly dependent on Saoirse playing them as if they were much funnier than they were), so not an evening wasted, but not really one well spent, for me at least.
