This isn't one of those "locked room" mysteries in which it turns out that none of the suspects could have done it. Not like "Ten Little Indians". Any one of the half dozen or so visitors to The Hollow, an isolated rural mansion, could have done it. In fact one of them, the dead man's jealous wife, was found standing over his dying body with a smoking pistol in her hand. But she's promptly gotten out of the way as a suspect because, as it turns out, the ballistics of her gun don't match the bullet in the victim.
At least this is one of the tales in which you can keep the characters straight. They look different from one another, and they include some familiar faces -- Sarah Miles, Edward Hardwicke, Lysette Anthony, Edward Fox -- and at least one of the less familiar faces is memorable of its own accord. Megan Dodds as Henrietta Savemake is one of those blond English beauties with intense sky-blue eyes and a nose like that prow of a sailing ship. All perform flawlessly.
It was rather a shock though to see Sarah Miles as the half-loony middle-aged wife of good old reliable Edward Hardwicke. I remember her best as the teen-aged temptress who drives Olivier mad in "Term of Trial," and as the semi-incestuous, totally nude sister of Dirk Bogarde in "The Servant," and as the proper young Devonshire nymphomaniac in "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea." Megan Dodds, the exquisite blond, gets the palm for looks. Beauty is so ephemeral but it's the first thing we notice about a person -- unless the person is aiming a cannon at us. Kind of silly too. A foolish millimeter here or there, a subtle arrangement of the soft parts of the face, and we have the kind of gorgeous person who winds up a movie star with no talent, a Rob Lowe, or who is married to a doctor and who thinks that Hippocrates was the original liar.
Don't get me started on the scientific studies of attractiveness that have appeared over the last two decades or so. Well, I'll mention one finding. They become sexually active at an earlier age. Big surprise, right?
I hate to ramble on like this but I'm a psychologist and, after all, what is there to say about the movie, really, if you can't reveal the details of the plot, let alone the mystery's solution? The period detail is, as always in this series, impeccable. There's very little levity in the series, for which reason I generally prefer the big screen Poirots. No one in the series has been half as funny as Angela Lansbury festooned with cheap jewelry in "Death on the Nile."
A good deal of effort has gone into this production and it's not bad. Some of the motivation is a little weak, I thought, and left unexplained. And a lady who has abetted a murder is in turn allowed to go free by Poirot at the end. What are you guilty of if you abet an abettor? What the hell does it mean, to "abet" something in the first place? I'd call my lawyer about this if I didn't think he'd charge an outlandish fee to answer a simple question.
At least this is one of the tales in which you can keep the characters straight. They look different from one another, and they include some familiar faces -- Sarah Miles, Edward Hardwicke, Lysette Anthony, Edward Fox -- and at least one of the less familiar faces is memorable of its own accord. Megan Dodds as Henrietta Savemake is one of those blond English beauties with intense sky-blue eyes and a nose like that prow of a sailing ship. All perform flawlessly.
It was rather a shock though to see Sarah Miles as the half-loony middle-aged wife of good old reliable Edward Hardwicke. I remember her best as the teen-aged temptress who drives Olivier mad in "Term of Trial," and as the semi-incestuous, totally nude sister of Dirk Bogarde in "The Servant," and as the proper young Devonshire nymphomaniac in "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea." Megan Dodds, the exquisite blond, gets the palm for looks. Beauty is so ephemeral but it's the first thing we notice about a person -- unless the person is aiming a cannon at us. Kind of silly too. A foolish millimeter here or there, a subtle arrangement of the soft parts of the face, and we have the kind of gorgeous person who winds up a movie star with no talent, a Rob Lowe, or who is married to a doctor and who thinks that Hippocrates was the original liar.
Don't get me started on the scientific studies of attractiveness that have appeared over the last two decades or so. Well, I'll mention one finding. They become sexually active at an earlier age. Big surprise, right?
I hate to ramble on like this but I'm a psychologist and, after all, what is there to say about the movie, really, if you can't reveal the details of the plot, let alone the mystery's solution? The period detail is, as always in this series, impeccable. There's very little levity in the series, for which reason I generally prefer the big screen Poirots. No one in the series has been half as funny as Angela Lansbury festooned with cheap jewelry in "Death on the Nile."
A good deal of effort has gone into this production and it's not bad. Some of the motivation is a little weak, I thought, and left unexplained. And a lady who has abetted a murder is in turn allowed to go free by Poirot at the end. What are you guilty of if you abet an abettor? What the hell does it mean, to "abet" something in the first place? I'd call my lawyer about this if I didn't think he'd charge an outlandish fee to answer a simple question.