In 1950s London’s West End, plans to film a successful play come to an abrupt halt after the murder of a key member of the troupe.
“The style and some of the actors are reminiscent of Grand Budapest Hotel Wes Anderson, the plot refers to the work of Agatha Christie, and the style is classic yellow, Once Upon a Time style. The mixture is explosive. Murder in the West End it is a product of superb craftsmanship, with a group of actors who work to perfection. Some of the director’s decisions (let’s not forget that this is Tom George’s debut in the world of feature films) are taken to the extreme. Interesting are the reconstructions of some real-life characters, for example, Agatha Christie herself or the actor Richard Attenborough, inserted into the context of a completely fictional plot.
Thus, although the film is fictional, in reality its script is based on a game of cross-references with the novel by the British writer Mousetrap. The story is actually based on a real-life murder, more specifically a couple of murders that took place in a London West End theater in the 1950s. All this, it would seem, is extremely connected with the staging of the theatrical adaptation of Christie’s work. also in Murder in the West End Cinema itself also comes into play as, given the success of the show, some film producers and directors are starting to get interested in the subject matter in order to be able to bring it to the big screen. In the course of events, the boundary between reality and literary fantasy is blurred, and a funny game of cross-references is created between the theatrical work and the fictional cinematic plot in a work in which literature, theater and cinema are perfectly balanced.
The film opens with the murder of the eccentric American director Leo Koepernick (the excellent Adrien Brody), whose voice-over introduces the viewer into the complex world of the film and, almost like Robert De Niro in Casino Scorsese, soon dies. A peculiar pair was used to conduct investigations: on the one hand, a somewhat stereotypical character, Inspector Sam Rockwell Stoppard, wrinkled, alcoholic and with a dramatic history behind him, on the other, a young and talkative police rookie girl, played by Saoirse Ronan. And it is Agent Stalker, perhaps, who represents the real strength of the film, with his clumsy gags and inexperience, he captures the viewer and draws him into the story, actually read through his eyes. A well-written and well-acted role is simply adapted to its performer and advertises Murder in the West End right energy.
Veronica Orciari, wild trails