Philip and Magda provided Aristide with three grandchildren: Sophia, Eustace (a teenager crippled by polio), and Josephine (a clever 12-year-old, who spies on everyone and writes it down in her notebook). Edith stalks around the grounds, blasting moles in the lawn with a shotgun.Īristide's elder son, Philip, hated his father for passing him over as successor to the family business, and for refusing to fund production of a screenplay he wrote for his wife, Magda, a fading theatre actress. She despised her brother-in-law as a parvenu and for his callousness towards his grandchildren. Lady Edith de Haviland was the sister of Aristide's late first wife she moved in to care for her motherless nephews. All of them get substantial bequests from Aristide's estate but all resented the way he bullied and manipulated them. Charles seeks the consent of Chief Inspector Taverner of Scotland Yard to look into the case, utilising his personal connection with Taverner, who had served with Charles's father, a decorated former Assistant Commissioner.Īt the Leonides estate, Charles interviews the various members of the family, finding motives for each of them. Charles reluctantly takes on the case, in part because he had a brief love affair with her in Cairo. Sophia believes this was deliberate, not accidental. Sophia notes that Aristide's regular insulin injection had been laced with eserine from his eye drops, causing a fatal heart attack. She wants Charles to investigate Aristide's death, and suspects he was murdered by a member of their sprawling and idiosyncratic family. Sophia Leonides, the granddaughter of late Greek-British business tycoon Aristide Leonides, visits private investigator Charles Hayward in his office. ( February 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. It’s guaranteed that you won’t feel any different than you did two hours ago.This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. There’s plenty of good stuff here, but Agatha Christie is Agatha Christie, and the setting, characters and all the rest of the usual hallmarks will never change. As the murder victim seems to universally disliked, there are motives aplenty, making the task even more difficult. A special mention must also go to Honor Kneafsey, who is surely a young star in the making on the basis of this performance.īut like all decent stories of this ilk, it will have you shouting at the TV screen or at a dead loss – either way, you’ll be nowhere near solving the mystery (unless you’ve read the book). To give Max Irons (Hayward) some credit, he does play the part with a good blend of cockiness and vulnerability, conveying the sense that this truly is someone who got where he is because of who, and not what, he knows, and so is being constantly undermined at every turn because of it. The way the characters are played in general also seems rather too polished at times, and more than a little stereotypical. Perhaps this is due to the passionate performances elsewhere, but it is a little disappointing, especially when even a Jazz club scene strangely reminiscent of Pulp Fiction fails to deliver. The main relationship of the piece, between the detective Charles Hayward and his old flame Sophia Leonides, seems to lack in terms of chemistry. I mean, we all want a fair crack at solving the mystery, don’t we? You could say it’s almost a little too character-driven in places though. What’s more is that this helps to deliver the direction the movie requires it’s all about the characters here, the mystery itself can well and truly take a backseat. Glenn Close, Terence Stamp, Gillian Anderson? All that’s needed is Robert DeNiro to make the unlikeliest of appearances and we’d have the greatest line-up since Brazil won the 1970 World Cup. Let’s start with the cast, because it really is sent from the gods. That’s not to say this crime drama is without its good points far from it. Which is perhaps just as well because, valiant attempt though it is, this is a film that probably only diehards would truly appreciate. It’s fair to say then, that I wasn’t expecting a great deal when I sat down for Crooked House. The slight disappointment of last year’s much-hyped Murder on the Orient Express seemed to prove that I’ve been justified about at least one thing in my life. Right, let’s get this out the way first: I’m not much of an Agatha Christie fan.
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