Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of a mean matriarch who is vacationing with her family in the middle east in this strictly by the numbers murder mystery. This is a Cannon film production the studio responsible for such classics as Lifeforce and Ninja III: The Domination.
Hack director Michael Winner put together an interesting cast, Lauren Bacall, Peter Ustinov, Haley Mills, Carrie Fisher and an interesting actor named Jenny Seagrove who wasn't able to really get a career going in films.
However even a decent cast has to deal with the artistic ambitions of Michael Winner and there isn't a whole lot any of them can do about that. Winner stages ever scene with his usual direct (coarse) approach to filming a movie.
The chief liability in this film is the Agatha Christie murder plot. Once again Christie withholds information from the viewer and spends an unending amount of time focusing on the time of the murder. Was it a 4:00 pm or 4:30 pm or 4:45 pm etc. Christie wrote a lot of murder mysteries and they weren't all winners but come to think of it mysteries kind of annoy me anyway.
102 minutes
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment