Ordeal by Innocence
Director:
Year: 2018
Rating: 8.0
Over the past week I was laid up with the flu and
the only thing I had the energy to do was lie in bed, watch Agatha Christie
movies, read Ed McBain 87th Precinct novels and go on to Facebook to denounce
Trump. Christie's books and movies are kind of comfort food for me - easy
to read and usually easy to watch - especially the Margaret Rutherford Miss
Marple films or the Peter Ustinov Hercule Poirot films. Not so much though
with most of these adaptations. Over the past couple of years BBC has begun
producing some films of her works that are very good and that really explore
the dark side of her books. This very proper upper middle-class English lady
murdered a lot of people in her lifetime in almost every way imaginable and
all over the world. Not a great stylistic writer by any means and rarely
with any deep insight into her characters, she was a brilliant creator of
intricate plots of murder. Where these ideas came from I can't imagine, but
in book after book people were murdered in these wonderfully clever ways
and she became the best selling author of all time. Her popularity ebbs and
flows but right now there appears to be a resurgence in her popularity. These
films will contribute to that.
This is a three part TV movie based on a 1958 novel by Agatha Christie of
the same name. It was one of her standalone books in that there was no Poirot
or Miss Marple or one of her lesser characters. She had a few classic suspense
novels like this - Then There Were None being the best known. This is an
amazingly good version of the book from BBC - beautifully photographed and
edited - and well acted by a group of actors I am not familiar with other
than Bill Nighy who is so good in this as he always is. Often a film with
loads of flashbacks drive me crazy but this film utilizes them perfectly
to fill in the spaces, slowly elucidate the viewer and build suspense to
the climax. This one had me guessing until the very end building the mystery
up and then unraveling it like a slow strip tease.
A woman is murdered, a man falsely accused and a house full of bitter suspects
- all orphans that the woman adopted years before and then ruled over like
a petty tyrant. When nearly two years later a man shows up confirming the
alibi of the accused the family cracks begin to show - then that means one
of them must be a murderer. I was expecting a turgid BBC production but the
production quality is top rate. Have been down with the flu for the past
few days and this was perfect flu TV watching.