Today, I’m looking for your pick for the best ORIGINAL fair play movie murder mystery.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
One of the seemingly rarest movie screenplay is a truly fair play murder mystery, by which I mean a murder mystery where the viewer can reasonably be expected to solve the murder based on the clues provided in the film. Far too often, there is some sort of contrivance that exposes the killer. Even when there ARE good fair play movie murder mysteries, they tend to be adapted from books. So what I’m looking for are the best examples of fair play movie murder mysteries that are also original stories.
My pick is Gosford Park, the Robert Altman-directed film that was written by Julian Fellowes. It details a murder at a dinner party, with the “upstairs” people (the rich folks) and the “downstairs” people (the servants) both independently trying to solve the murder. It’s really well done, and a fair play mystery.
Okay, that’s my pick. How about you?
Everyone, feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
Not a who done it but how it was done. I would go with Body Heat. it was fun watching all the clues fit together in the end. of course maybe I would not have been impressed as much if had seen the movie that influenced it first, Double Indeminty or Vertigo.
Not a favorite but I always remember Suspect with Cher as defense attorney and Dennis Quaid as a juror at the trial. I remember because Siskel & Ebert complained the killer solution was unfair. according to them it was not just out of left field but not in the ballpark at all. Then when I saw there was a point Quaid finds I think it was a Presidential pin.
SPOILER.
I immediately knew who did it. the judge on the case was being considered for a higher position by the President. I don’t remember why but at that point it was obvious it was him.
I think my favorite recently that I can think of is Knives Out. I figured out the murderer and that one of the witnesses was lying to out the murderer before the end of the film, but it never stopped being entertaining regardless.