Film Review: SEE HOW THEY RUN (2022): Saoirse Ronan is Terrific in a Whodunit Mystery that Lacks a Bit in Character Development

See How They Run Review

See How They Run (2022) Film Review, a movie directed by Tom George, written by Mark Chappell and starring Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, David Oyelowo, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Charlie Cooper, Maggie McCarthy, Harris Dickinson, Gregory Cox, Tim Key, Ania Marson, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Sian Clifford, Reece Shearsmith, Oliver Jackson and Pearl Chander.

Director Tom George had chosen the two perfect stars for his new film, See How They Run, in Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan. However, Rockwell’s unique talents are not used to their full advantage while Ronan, on the other hand, successfully plays a role in which she is cast against type. It’s an interesting outcome in a movie where Rockwell should have stood out significantly. He’s decent here playing the part as it was probably written but his signature charm seems to be absent a bit in the new movie. Ronan therefore gets to run away with the film and she’s the reason the movie almost works. Almost.

In the new film, which is set in the West End of London in the early 1950’s, a movie director named Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody) is taking an interest in an Agatha Christie play called, The Mousetrap. This is a popular production and the movie gets its plot rolling as Kopernick, the film’s narrator, ends up being killed and placed dead on the stage by a murderer who is at large. Enter Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) and his bumbling partner Constable Stalker (Ronan). They have been assigned to investigate the murder of Kopernick and must use specific techniques which Stoppard will have to teach the wet behind the ears Constable Stalker.

Stalker is well developed. She likes movies, is ambitious and has the willingness to learn. Stoppard on the other hand, seems a little less developed. The movie reveals some details on his life later on but they come a bit too late to really make us invested in his character. Some of the murder suspects are none other than Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson) who is the star of The Mousetrap and a writer named Mervyn Cocker-Norris (a very good David Oyelowo) but the twisty plot reveals more twist and turns that could have, perhaps, used a rewrite by an Agatha Christie style mystery writer. As written here, the movie throws the plot twists in willy-nilly and it feels like the performers involved are improvising more times than not.

One particularly fun scene has Stoppard and Stalker sitting in a car and Stoppard gets out to go drinking even though he tells Stalker he’s got a dentist appointment. So, when all hell breaks loose, Stalker goes to look for Stoppard and wouldn’t you know, one apartment building has four different dentists. What dentist is Stoppard seeing? Imagine Stalker’s surprise when she sees Stoppard coming out of the bar next door.

The best sequence in the movie comes towards the end as characters discuss play writing, freedom of expression and other things that may make people with an artistic background a bit envious. Stalker must try to save the day as she is driving through some snowy scenery and must get to the location where the murderer is present before it is too late.

Another interesting scenario is when Stoppard seems to be visiting the afterlife and meets up with Brody’s Kopernick in a funny situation that has some decent dialogue. There aren’t a lot of other scenes as clever and a lot of See How They Run plays out in a conventional, by-the-numbers way. There are surprises but they aren’t fully earned by the script. In a good whodunit, you’ll be able to guess the murderer. Here, it’s almost like they picked a random culprit and it’s almost impossible for the audience to guess the killer. I’m not saying it should be simple to guess the killer but we needed more character development of the suspected murderers.

I really liked the split-screen scenes where they show one character’s action on one side and the reaction of other characters on the other side of the screen. It’s a shame the story doesn’t live up to such creative techniques with a more polished script. There are a lot of good ideas here that needed to be shaped into something more concrete and plausible to be fully effective.

Saoirse Ronan is a great actress and she does something that is hard to do here which is outshine Sam Rockwell who plays his role straight and therefore gives us very little of his distinct personality that has made so many other of his previous roles work extremely well for him. If you’re a Ronan fan, you’ll want to follow her character in this movie and see if she can accomplish her dream of becoming a sergeant. It’s a fun character in a movie that needed to be more joyful and more dark simultaneously to achieve what it most likely set out to do.

Rating: 6.5/10

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