Sparkling Cyanide
Director: Tristram Powell
Year: 2003
Rating: 5.0
A group of seven is out to dinner at a fine restaurant
and they raise their champagne glasses to toast a birthday and because of
the title you are fairly sure one of those people will not be walking away
and that one of those persons is a murderer. You just wait to see who keels
over. This is based on a novel from Agatha Christie of the same title from
1945 and it feels odd not seeing Poirot or Miss Marple pop in to solve the
crime. But Christie had a few other detectives in her boudoir though none
of them gained the popularity of her two favorites - though she grew very
tired of Poirot over time. Superintendent Battle was in four mysteries; Tommy
and Tuppence were in five novels, Parker Pyne was in one and Colonel Race
was the protagonist in two novels and made appearances in two Poirot crime
novels - Cards on the Table and Death on the Nile (where he was played by
David Niven in the film).
Sparkling Cyanide is a Colonel Race mystery - though weirdly the scriptwriters
turn Race into a husband/wife combination that more resembles Tommy and Tuppence
than the Race of the books. But they are rather a cute just short of elderly
couple who are secret agents brought in by the British govt to figure it
out and deter any embarrassment to the Prime Minister - as an MP was at the
dinner table.
But what really hurts this film is that it is brought up to the present (2003
in this case) and they use technology - hacking bank accounts and emails
and accessing CCTV cameras at the drop of a hat - to basically solve it.
No brilliance here. No shifting through clues, motives and alibis to get
to the bottom of it. Too bad because Oliver Ford Davies as Race (though called
Reece here) and Pauline Collins as his wife and fellow investigator are very
charming and the only reason to watch it. This is the reason that I basically
stick to pre-1980 suspense and crime novels - pre-technology which I think
modern writers use too much as a cheap shortcut.
