“See How They Run” (MA) *** and a half

IN this comical who-dunnit spoof of Agatha Christie’s long-running play “The Mousetrap”, during a backstage party in the London West End theatre celebrating its 100th performance in 1953, a faceless antagonist murders visiting American film director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody).

Mark Chappell’s screenplay imagines that Scotland Yard, its hands full of serious crime in the search for the 10 Rillington Place serial killer, sends its B team to investigate. 

Liquor-loving Insp Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and enthusiastic cop-in-training Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) interview a long list of suspects. 

Could the murderer be playwright Mervyn Cocker-Norris (David Oyelowo), film producer John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith), grand dame Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson) or even actor Richard Attenborough (Harris Dickinson)? There are plenty of other suspects and as time runs out, the killer strikes again.

“Maybe it’s all of them?” hopefully suggests Stalker. “See How They Run” leans heavily on comedy mainly expressed as wordplay linking “The Mousetrap” to the play from which it takes its name (“Hamlet” – remember those strolling players come to entertain the Danish court with a performance of “The Murder of Gonzago?) and the basic plot leading to a remote English country house where the killer is finally identified.

Director Tom George and writer Mark Chappell deliver laughs and intrigue in equal measure. Rockwell and Ronan display admirable timing as the investigators. 

Constable Stalker’s over-eagerness to identify the killer might reflect the filmgoer’s eagerness for resolution. “See How They Run’s” light touch and genial nature compensate filmgoers with a taste for the absurd against a background of a grimy, post-war London (to date more than 10 million people have paid to watch “The Mousetrap”, which is still running). 

In the film, that pint-sized acting powerhouse Shirley Henderson plays Agatha Christie. 

At all cinemas