Agatha e gli omicidi di mezzanotte

The opening credit/scene was so unnecessarily gruesome, I nearly turned it off right then and there. But I needn't have worried about that...it had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. I can't imagine what they were thinking it achieved.

Mind due, if I had turned it off I might have saved myself a few hours of watching mediocre nonsense.

It had the standard formula for a Christie, but that's where the similarities ended. There was very little in the way of mystery, clues or detection and rather just sudden murders, finger pointing and an ongoing manhunt.

I didn't mind some of it, but it the twists were a bit wild.

In an earlier review, djalloyingj-7365929 August 2021 asks how a film set in 1940 can have a rude song about Hitler's balls set to "The Bridge on the River Kwai" march theme, when "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was made many years after 1940 and the end of World War II. What djalloyingj-7365929 does not realise is that the march theme used in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" is actually a much earlier military march, written by a British counterpart to America's military march king, John Philip Sousa. The original march is called "Colonel Bogey", and a little web-searching can add much detail to this, although "Colonel Bogey" seems to be a fictitious character. The naughty words, very popular with the British army, and naughty little boys, tell us that "Hitler had only one brass ball, Goering had two, but very small, Himmler was somewhat sim'lar, but poor old Goebels had no balls at all!" This may not have been historically correct, but was very satisfying to sing very loudly. The idea that Agatha Christie, in real life, might find herself in a real murder scene, and be able to use her fictionally honed mystery-solving skills to solve the mystery is sufficient to motivate "Agatha and the Midnight Murders", and other (fictional) murder mysteries that do not involve Christie's usual sleuths, such as Poirot and Marple.

Tom Dalton strikes again, giving us another installment of Agatha Christie, albeit another work of fiction.

First point, without there being an Agatha Christie scheduled for Christmas, it's a shame they didn't save this one up until the festive season, a miserable Wednesday night in October was bizarre scheduling, meaning this drama will perhaps go unnoticed.

In truth, I think it may have been a bit more enjoyable, had I been three sheets to the wind with Christmas port.

The story was a bit odd, but it was Agatha Christie herself who was so off, we've had two different interpretations of her previously, Marshall and Bradley, this time Helen Baxendale.

Baxendale is an excellent actress, and performs particularly well, it was a very good performance, the problem was more so the material she's working with, Christie was portrayed as a somewhat devious, conniving character, I'm not sure anyone believes that about her.

I'm glad they're still making them, I enjoyed the last two, this one is pretty good, I thought the first half was pretty poor, but the second half was much, much better.

If you can stick with it, the ending is rewarding, it's better with a second watch. 6/10.

Somehow I got a third of the way through this debacle of a movie before I realised I may totally lose the will to live if I watched a second more. Helen Baxendale, totally miscast, did the best she could with the abysmal script, but could do nothing to improve it. The rest of the characters did nothing but annoy, and the acting in general was amateurish. The supposed comic moments were unfunny and embarrassing and the suspense was conspicuous by its absence. The occasional bad language seemed way out of character and the actual story was about as interesting as fishing. I regret every second I wasted on this - even the time spent writing this frigging review! What a waste of effort. I have been generous giving it 2 stars. Watch this at your own peril.

I'll give points for the idea, because they could have actually gone somewhere with this storyline. Instead what we got was an uninspiring mess with flaccid characters and an uneven plot. It made it far too obvious who the villain was, you didn't even have to guess. It was just awful. Poor Agatha, they did her dirty. Poor woman must be turning in her grave.