The term OAP (Old Aged Pensioner) is surely elder. It’s like reminding someone of their late stage in life three times. But The Thursday Murder Club, rather than being an extreme social club, is instead four pensioners in a retirement home putting their skills together to solve years old criminal cold cases. So we have retired union rep Ron (Pierce Brosnan), retired psychologist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), retired nurse Joyce (Celia Imrie) and all headed up by Elizabeth(Helen Mirren) a retired, well she never initially explains what but there’s clearly far more to her than meets the eye.
Each Thursday the four meet up , not to murder, but instead to pore over the details of old unsolved cases and we meet them first with the case of a woman thrown out of a window with a knife in the their back but their amateur sleuthing skills are soon turned to their own doorstep when the property developer Ian Ventham (a flamboyant David Tennant), who owns the grounds of their retirement home, is murdered along with his building contractor. So though the local police led by a stereotypically incompetent police inspector (Daniel Mays) they decide to have a go themselves embroiling the inspector’s female PC (Naomi Ackie) who is assisting him into also assisting them. What is opened is a whole can of worms that takes in long wanted criminals, mystery graves, and people trafficking as the film works towards its reveal.
The film is adapted from Richard Osman’s debut novel, himself something of a multi hyphenate having been a TV executive before coming to the fore as a quiz show host, podcaster, and now best selling author and has cornered the cosy crime market that’s seen TV series like Midsommar Murders run for decades (with hundreds of deaths that surely must have left the only residents left to be the ducks in the village pond) but remains massively popular. Having been optioned by Spielberg’s production company this is a glossy star packed feature with a terrific quartet of actors supported by other well known names and faces. To that end we have Jonathan Pryce as Elizabeth’s husband suffering from alzheimer’s and who has the most poignant of scenes as he struggles with his memory.
Helmed by Chris Columbus (whose all too used to these all star films having directed the first two Harry Potter films) and his lightness of touch is ideally suited to this type of murder mystery. And as ever with the all star Agatha Christie film template part of the fun is for the audience to work out who is bumping off bodies and why. Like so many of those classic Christie novels the audience aren’t privy to certain information and it’s only that the members of the Thursday Murder Club have details leaked to them by Naomie Ackie’s Pc that removes a degree of credibility in the proceedings when she would have been banged up for possible malfeasance or more likely gross misconduct. And its only because this occurs that the quartet are able to solve the case.
The four leads are enjoyably played although seem to have the most extraordinary well remunerated pensions to be able to afford to live in such a palatial retirement home. But it’s Helen Mirren who gets the lion share of lines followed by Pierce Brosnan who, post Bond, has made some cracking films. Kingsley’s role is underwritten and is a waste of such an actor as Celia Imrie another great comic actress and something of a national treasure, who is on point but her characters medical skills seem to have come from a time where merely listening to someone’s chest for a matter of seconds before declaring them dead is equalled only by Mays police inspector’s inability to follow up basic leads for the case.
The Thursday Murder Club is likely to delight fans of the book and in fairness there’s enough plotting to keep you guessing along to the very end and that should ensure that Osman’s other books will see them make it to the screen,
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Here’s The Thursday Murder Club trailer….
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