Albeit slightly too concerned with its own premise and uneven lead performances, this star-studded romp feels like good ol’ rainy-afternoon fun.

***

It’s nice to be in on the joke. It’s also nice to be self-aware and approach genre tropes with a tongue-in-cheek style. But while both of these statements apply to Tom George’s See How They Run, the film itself seems a little bit too concerned with its own cleverness that it feels a little laboured after a while, despite a host of famous faces chewing away at the scenery. (Some more thoroughly than others.)

There’s been a murder at The Mousetrap. During a party celebrating the 100^th performance of Agatha Christie’s well-loved play on London’s West End, American director Leo Kopernick (Adrien Brody) is found dead, placed rather purposefully on centre stage in the theatre. The sardonic and somewhat booze-soaked Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) is assigned the case, helped along by the particularly enthusiastic rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan), and the pair must trawl through a host of suspects to find their killer.

A bit of a satire, a bit of a spoof, and a bit of a classic murder-mystery, See How They Run is juggling quite a few plates. It’s first and foremost a comedy, camp and farcical with a healthy dose of self-referential quirkiness. It’s stylish and really well pieced together from George and cinematographer Jamie Ramsay, and Mark Chappell’s script is a whodunnit wrapped in another whodunnit, clearly relishing in utilising The Mousetrap’s infamous policy of ‘no spoilers, please’. But it’s therein that lies the film’s main problem: being too concerned with its cleverness and premise that it feels the tiniest bit smug. It’s fine to be meta, to be aware of clichés and tropes on the murder-mystery bandwagon, but to consistently remind audiences of them and of how to navigate past them feels a little much. Perhaps leaning into the hokeyness might have made it feel a little bit less self-satisfied.

It’s a particularly stacked cast list that reads like a who’s who of British film, television and theatre talent: Reece Shearsmith, Ruth Wilson, David Oyelowo (all pictured above), Shirley Henderson, Lucian Msamati, Charlie Cooper and Pippa Bennett-Warner, to name a few. But this is Rockwell and Ronan’s headline show.

As Stoppard and Stalker, their dynamic of the seasoned, world-weary old-hat and the fresh-faced, keen-bean rookie is a lot of fun, and most of the film’s funniest moments come from their interactions. But while Ronan is the zest of the film, giving a tremendously layered, earnest performance and fully committing to the comedy, Rockwell is… decidedly not. His performance feels lethargic, and not in a ‘deliberate character choice’ kind of way, but rather like he’s just bored being there. It’s somewhat effective in-situ, but does make it difficult to really connect with him or care for him much once the film is done. Ronan is much more memorable and essentially carries the whole thing, as the majority of the supporting cast are, perhaps purposefully, less developed.

It’s uneven lead performances and overreliance on its gimmick being the Most. Important. Thing aside, See How They Run is entertaining. It’s funny, it zips along at a fair pace and resolves itself in a way that’s very fitting, adequately surprising and decently satisfying. It feels designed for fans of a good page-turner, of whodunnits and murder mystery stories. And for everyone else, it’s upper-tier rainy-afternoon type fun.

Just don’t tell anyone the ending.