"Agatha Christie: Poirot" Cards on the Table (2005)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Sarah Harding

Writers:

Agatha Christie (novel)
Nick Dear (screenplay)

TV Series:

"Agatha Christie: Poirot" (1989)

Original Air Date:

11 December 2005 (Season 10, Episode 2)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Crime | Thriller

Plot:

The enigmatic, sinister Mr. Shaitana, one of London's richest men, invites 8 guests, 4 of them possible murderers and 4 'detectives' to his opulent apartment.

Plot Keywords:

Hercule Poirot | Stabbed To Death | Photographer | Syrian | Homosexuality

Cast

David Suchet	...	Hercule Poirot
James Alper	...	Shaitana's Butler
Philip Bowen	...	Mr. Luxmore
Cordelia Bugeja	...	Mrs. Luxmore
Zigi Ellison	...	Mrs. Craddock
Tristan Gemmill	...	Major Despard
Alex Jennings	...	Dr. Roberts
Lucy Liemann	...	Miss Burgess
Lesley Manville	...	Mrs. Lorrimer
Lyndsey Marshal	...	Miss Meredith
Jenny Ogilvie	...	Millie
Robert Pugh	...	Colonel Hughes
Douglas Reith	...	Serge Maurice
Alexander Siddig	...	Shaitana
Zoë Wanamaker	...	Ariadne Oliver

Runtime:

USA:120 min (including commercials) | 94 min (approx.) | Finland:93 min (excluding commercials)

Country:

UK

Language:

Italian | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Certification:

USA:TV-PG | Australia:M | Australia:PG (DVD rating) | Netherlands:6

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

Agatha Christie

Goofs:

Continuity: During the party, Shaitana talks to a waiter and pushes him towards Poirot and Mrs. Oliver. When Shaitana pushes him, there is one cocktail glass on the tray carried by the waiter. When he approaches Poirot and Mrs. Oliver, there are two.

Quotes:

Mr. Shaitana: Typically a woman's weapon is poison, is it not, Poirot?

Rewriting

As time went on, the producers of the Suchet series got smarter.

The money for the production is more, for sure. But there's more intelligence in the projects. Gone are the reliance on the stupid tactic of making fun of Poirot. Gone are the supposedly endearing recurring characters. Good riddance.

IMDb comments are useful in this case, because they reveal a trend. Christie really was a master of sorts in writing mysteries. When screenwriters muck about with the plots, they neuter the mystery, usually. But in this case, I feel the adjustments made to the book are both an improvement in any medium, and much more cinematic as well.

You know, watching movies is fun, even when you watch them simply. But its more fun if you watch them lucidly. In this case that means noticing why they did certain things and what the underlying sense of those actions imply. Its how Poirot would be watching this and if you are not, well, you are missing something.

There is motive behind the changes. Photographs become more than evidence of crimes, but of embarrassing revelations of (sexual) identity.

The character of the rich, exotic victim is changed from things that a racist, class-sensitive earlier Britain would understand, to something we can understand and perceive visually. The important things from the book are emphasized more than in the book: the folded notion of one of the detectives being a woman writer of detective novels who seems to get all the logic wrong as she follows a sort of faux Miss Marple intuition.

There are four suspects and four detectives. This dynamic is also clarified and made visual. All the clues are presented cinematically. The game of playing a game is made more astute.

I realize that there are folks who think every change must be a change for the worse. But this is really for the better. And I (in my Poirot stance) appreciate what these folks have done with this episode in a usually offensively bad series.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.