After reading all the other reviews, i was really looking forward to this movie. We saved it for an uninterrupted block of time, made the good popcorn, changed into some toasty fleece and slippers.
Well, we saw it. I wish I could recommend it. No complaints on the casting; Robert Preston led a group of actors who played their parts perfectly well.
But a good whodunit is a cheat if the audience never sees the killer in the same frame with the victim, as least fleetingly. Misdirection and red herrings are staples of a murder mystery and not knowing who the killer was is the whole point, but in the end when all is revealed, the viewer has to be able to say, "Oh yeah, remember when that guy ...", and that never happened here. Unless the version I saw tonight on Youtube was edited in some way (and supposedly it was not), there was no tie-in to the crime throughout the movie, until the big reveal at the end. When the other reviewers on this page say, "You'll never guess who the killer was," that's because there was absolutely no clue during the movie that their paths had ever crossed before.
I hope I'm wrong and that section had been accidentally left out of the version I saw. I expected more from Levinson and Link.
Well, we saw it. I wish I could recommend it. No complaints on the casting; Robert Preston led a group of actors who played their parts perfectly well.
But a good whodunit is a cheat if the audience never sees the killer in the same frame with the victim, as least fleetingly. Misdirection and red herrings are staples of a murder mystery and not knowing who the killer was is the whole point, but in the end when all is revealed, the viewer has to be able to say, "Oh yeah, remember when that guy ...", and that never happened here. Unless the version I saw tonight on Youtube was edited in some way (and supposedly it was not), there was no tie-in to the crime throughout the movie, until the big reveal at the end. When the other reviewers on this page say, "You'll never guess who the killer was," that's because there was absolutely no clue during the movie that their paths had ever crossed before.
I hope I'm wrong and that section had been accidentally left out of the version I saw. I expected more from Levinson and Link.