Agatha
Christie remains so beloved by her public, we still can’t help wondering where she
got off to during her mysterious eleven-day disappearance. It served as the
inspiration for the 1979 film Agatha that suggested Dame Agatha was
researching methods to kill her unfaithful husband’s other woman. That was not so
satisfying for fans, especially since she was played by Vanessa Redgrave, an outspoken
supporter of the anti-Semitic PLO terrorist syndicate. This is take #2. This
time around, Ms. Christie slips away from her personal drama to solve a murder
mystery in Terry Loane’s Agatha and the Truth of Murder, which is scheduled
to release on iTunes today.
It
is relatively early on in Agatha Christie’s celebrated career, but she is
already feeling pressure to keep surprising her readers. She even seeks out the
advice from her crusty old colleague, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes, their professional
careers really did overlap). However, the old blowhard isn’t much help.
Frankly, her creative problems are really rooted in her marital problems, which
Col. Christie wants to solve with a divorce. Of course, the wronged writer has
no intention of giving him such an easy out. She also still thinks she loves
him.
The
future Dame is not very gracious when retired nurse Mabel Rogers comes seeking
her assistance to solve the six-years-cold murder of her best friend, Florence
Nightingale Shore, who really was the god daughter of Florence Nightingale and
was very definitely bludgeoned to death on a train bound from London to
Brighton. Despite her own domestic turmoil, Christie becomes fascinated with
the crime and eventually agrees to apply her deductive talents to it.
Fittingly,
she hatches a risky scheme, in which the five leading suspects will be summoned
to a remote country estate on the pretext of a potential inheritance, allowing
the great mystery writer to examine them while pretending to be an agent of the
estate solicitor. Alas, her plan starts to implode when one of the suspects
turns into a victim.
Screenwriter
Tom Dalton cleverly fuses together the two historical mysteries of Christie’s
disappearance and the murder of Nightingale Shore. The problem is the first act
is downright pokey, wasting a lot of time on awkward character development that
is already established for most mystery fans. On the other hand, the country
manor business stays pretty true to the spirit of Christie’s books.
Ruth
Bradley (from Grabbers) is okay as Christie, but it is definitely a
portrayal that emphasizes her cerebral nature over any sense of her charisma.
Fortunately, the film gets a boost of energy from Ralph Ineson (probably best
known for The Witch) playing the perceptive Detective Inspector Dicks. The
truth is Scotland Yard detectives fared better in Christie’s work than many of
her contemporaries (including Conan Doyle), with Superintendent Battle
appearing (favorably) in five novels and DS Trotter eternally solving the case
in The Mousetrap. Recognizable character actor Tim McInnerny also chews
some scenery in quite the appropriate manner as Randolph a relative of Nightingale
Shore and a suspect in her murder.
