See How They Run is not a film adaptation of The Mousetrap, and yet it is ★★★☆☆

As soon as Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap turned out to be a success in the London theatre, not long after its premiere in 1952, several film studios were vying for the rights. That battle was won in 1956 by the English producer John Woolf, who unconcernedly signed a clause stipulated by Christie: the film could only be made if the play was no longer performed. The Mousetrap became the longest-running stage performance in the world and still attracts full houses.

hence See How They Run by screenwriter Mark Chappell and director Tom George no film adaptation of The Mousetrap is. And yet again: the film is a metaversion of the play. The story is set in the fifties, in and around the theater where The Mousetrap is staged. The first death falls after a few minutes. And everyone in the party is suspicious.

The classic murder mystery has been making a comeback in theaters for a while now. Kenneth Branagh (re)filmed Christie’s stories Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nilewhile Rian Johnson with the hugely successful Knives Out gave an ironic twist to the genre. The sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mysterypremiered at the Toronto Film Festival last week.

The appeal of such whodunits is not difficult to explain. They are light-hearted, smoothly told films with an extensive star cast and a surprising plot, in which the audience actively participates in the search for the perpetrator, but at the same time can sit back and expect to be entertained.

See How They Run fits that description exactly. Two cops, the somber Stoppard (American actor Sam Rockwell, with a shaky English accent) and the eager novice Stalker (Saoirse Ronan), try to solve the brutal murder of American film director Köpernick (Adrien Brody). Everyone has a motive, from the screenwriter who can’t agree on the script to the unfaithful producer and the actors who may or may not be spurned. Agatha Christie herself also makes her appearance.

It’s all very entertaining, although the incessant tongue-in-cheek tone gets a bit tiresome after a while. Sympathetic self-mockery about flashbacks (the screenwriter in the story hates them, while See How They Run of flashbacks) is immediately outbid with a joke that is too bland to repeat.

The solution of the mystery is also far too far-fetched. But that’s not really a problem: the charm of the whodunit lies not in the right answer, but in all the wrong turns.