Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan portray mismatched detectives looking into the backstage murder of a film director (Adrien Brody) following a production of Agatha Christie’s play “The Mousetrap” in “See How They Run,” a ridiculous whodunit set in early 1950s London.
However, the real offender was always skulking in the theatre aisles. Actors, stagehands, and even the police themselves have been accused of being involved. We find out during the final 15 minutes of “Run” that usher Dennis Corrigan (Charlie Cooper) killed the director and is now planning to kill Christie (Shirley Henderson).
Dennis explains that he was the boy at the centre of a prominent child abuse case that later served as the play’s inspiration while holding the “Mousetrap” cast at gunpoint. When he realised “Mousetrap” was going to be converted into a feature picture, he made the decision to exact brutal retribution in the hopes that the movie version wouldn’t be produced since he felt Christie had exploited his childhood misery.
Director Tom George explains, “The difficulty in developing a movie in this genre is how to offer something unique when every imaginable story twist has probably already been done.” Look to Christie herself for the solution.
Although there were no actual murders committed behind the scenes of “Mousetrap,” there are real-life aspects in “Run.” In “Mousetrap,” a group of individuals are stranded in a country manor during a snowfall, and when a woman is discovered dead, they all become suspects.
The murderer is identified as the older sibling of a boy who was killed in a violent foster home at the conclusion of the play. The first victim of the murderer was their foster mother, and the second was the magistrate who assigned them to that residence.
The story of Dennis O’Neill, a 12-year-old kid who was killed by his foster father, Reginald Gough, in 1945, was partially based on “Mousetrap.”
After being found guilty of manslaughter in connection with his horrifying death, Gough received a six-year prison term. Later, Dennis O’Neill’s brother Terence released “Someone to Love Us,” a memoir about their experience with abuse and neglect in foster care.
According to scriptwriter Mark Chappell, “The real-life situation was as horrible as can be.” The O’Neill children were “placed in foster care and were horribly mistreated by the foster parents. At the time, as it would be today, it was extremely surprising.
The usher makes an effort to murder Christie at the film’s conclusion before Ronan and Rockwell’s characters can thwart his scheme. The O’Neills who are still alive didn’t argue with Christie about being the inspiration for “Mousetrap” in reality.
According to Christie historian Julius Green, I think some O’Neill family members have seen the play, and as far as I know, they don’t have any issues with it. Since Christie approaches the topic with great sensitivity and understanding, there is no need for them to.”
Another real-life example is Dennis’ opposition to a “Mousetrap” movie. Christie, who passed away in 1976, specified in her contract before “Mousetrap” debuted in London that the play couldn’t be turned into a film until after the West End run had ended.
According to Chappell, who found a kind of solution by placing “a murder mystery against the backdrop of ‘The Mousetrap,’ that incident was what initially launched everyone on the course of (this movie). (Christie) cherished the twist endings she used.
Additionally, she believed that the play would only run for eight months.” The West End production of “Mousetrap” is still running after 70 years, shattering the previous record for the longest-running show in history.
Later, it had an impact on other popular mystery films including “Clue,” “Knives Out,” and the current release “Run.” Any genre-defining work will be mimicked, and “The Mousetrap” is the most genre-defining stage thriller there is, according to Green. While parodies will fluctuate, the original will endure forever.
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