See How They Run (2022) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Tom George

Starring:  Sam Rockwell, Saorise Ronan, David Oyelowo, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith

See How They Run is a lightweight murder mystery centered around Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which has been running in London's West End since circa 1953 and is the world's longest running play.  As See How They run opens in 1953, sleazy Hollywood director Leo Kopernick (Brody) is working at adapting the play to the big screen and making enemy after enemy in the process with his obnoxiousness and alienating personality.   Leo narrates the first few minutes of the film describing the setup in which he would eventually become a murder victim.   He is clearly not a fan of Agatha Christie's work: ("There are no dead bodies in the first ten minutes")

Leo is killed in brutal fashion and his body placed on a couch in the middle of the stage.  Inexperienced Constable Stalker (Ronan) and drunken Inspector Stoppard (Rockwell) are assigned to the case.    Ronan is a lovable, plucky Irish cop and Stoppard speaks and behaves as if he is channeling Captain Jack Sparrow.   Rockwell and Ronan are incredibly accomplished actors, of course, and we wonder why See How They Run requires their services.   But they are in See How They Run all the same and it is always fun to see them.  

There is no dearth of suspects in Leo's murder.   Everyone he ever came in contact with has a reason to want to kill him.   This includes screenwriter Mervyn Cocker-Norris, whose every draft is met with disdain by Leo, producer John Woolf (Shearsmith) who is hiding an affair he is having with his assistant which Leo discovers and uses to his advantage, and at one point even Stoppard himself is a suspect.   See How They Run is amusing for a while, with an ending in which the group of suspects (and Agatha Christie herself) are gathered in a room together Christie-style.   Following the movie, I found myself not thinking much about it, which can be a positive or a negative depending on your worldview. 

Don't Worry Darling (2022) * 1/2

Directed by:  Olivia Wilde

Starring:  Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Nick Kroll, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan

I am not revealing a spoiler by suggesting that Don't Worry Darling is all spoiler.   It is so blatantly obvious from the first frame that Something Is Wrong that the movie is just a slog of a waiting game until the Big Reveal is inexorably revealed.   And when it's revealed, it isn't anything special.   I was able to ascertain the twist because I've seen The Truman Show and The Village. 

I won't be a churl and uncover anything further.   Don't Worry Darling seemingly takes place in the 1950's in a sun-drenched suburban paradise where the men drive off to work every day and the women perform their daily tasks and find ways to kill time until their husbands arrive home and service them on the dinner table.  That is at least the case with Jack (Styles) and Alice (Pugh), who appear to be the perfect couple in this Shangri-La in the middle of the American desert.   The streets and homes look like leftover sets from The Truman Show, but hey you can't have everything.   With that being said, Don't Worry Darling looks gorgeous.   Its production values and performances far exceed the material they are saddled with.

All is not right in this utopia run by Frank (Pine), who is Jack's boss and the leader of The Victory Project, the shadowy company in the middle of the desert where the men work and are forbidden to discuss with their spouses.   While Alice tends to the household chores, Frank's voice penetrates the soundtrack sounding like someone reading from a self-help guide to living up to your potential.   Nameless men dressed in all red lurk in the vicinity as security guards.   A distressed neighbor slits her own throat while standing on her roof.  Yep, nothing suspicious to see here.   Frank may as well be wearing a t-shirt signaling his villainy or perhaps his cult leadership.   The mysterious goings-on which cause Alice to question her reality are as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. 

No one believes Alice, naturally, crediting her suspicions to anxiety or exhaustion.   Frank, however, seems to relish the challenge Alice provides him.   When she accuses Frank of being an evil manipulator who is controlling lives in front of all their friends at a dinner party, Frank can hardly contain his self-satisfied smirk.   Pugh gives us as sympathetic a protagonist as one could expect.   Harry Styles has been criticized for not being up to Pugh's skill level, but if you think about the nature of their relationship, it makes sense for Styles to take a back seat, even in the town of Victory. 

Don't Worry Darling is Olivia Wilde's second feature, after the overrated Booksmart (2019).  Wilde exhibits the appropriate technical skills to be a big-time director, but even she needs better material to work from.  Don't Worry Darling is so excited to show us its secrets that it never builds suspense by attempting to hide them.  

Confess, Fletch (2022) * *

 

Directed by: Greg Mottola

Starring:  Jon Hamm, Roy Wood Jr., Marcia Gay Harden, Lorenza Izzo, Kyle MacLachlan, Annie Mumolo, Ayden Mayeri, John Slattery

Confess, Fletch might not have ever had a chance of working because we identify so vividly with Chevy Chase from the 1985 film and its 1989 sequel.   Chase handled the role of investigative reporter "of some repute" I. M. Fletcher with wry cynicism and droll voiceover narration.   The screenplays played to Chase's strengths and although he was a wiseacre, on occasion things did bother him like his ex-wife and getting shot at, and he was funny.  Confess, Fletch and Jon Hamm's characterization sadly are not.   Hamm tries, but never finds his rhythm with the role.   He plays Fletch as detached, so much so that it seems like he was flown in from another film... a better one hopefully.   The jokes fall flat and there is no voiceover narration.  Confess, Fletch plays like a routine, low energy whodunit.   

We have a sense Hamm was trying too hard to make us forget about Chase and the movie wasn't trying hard enough.   The plot, involving Fletch's girlfriend's father's missing paintings and Fletch himself being framed for a murder, almost dares us to care about it.   Fletch is a murder suspect but he hardly seems to notice.   He playfully deals with the detectives on the case (Wood Jr. and Mayeri) while also trying to solve the crime.   Nothing seems to faze this version of Fletch.   If he doesn't give a hoot, why should we?   Confess, Fletch is the textbook definition of "meh".  

The best scenes involve Fletch and his former newspaper boss (Slattery) meeting up and trying to top one another in the deadpan cynicism department.   Slattery and Hamm were, of course, former co-stars of Mad Men so it's great to seem them together again.   They have strong chemistry, which can't be said for Hamm and the rest of the actors.   There are some great character actors (including Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden) present in the movie, but they don't say or do anything memorable.   I don't know if Hamm's characterization is closer to what MacDonald intended, but Chevy Chase casts a shadow far too large for Hamm to escape it.