While I have a plethora of praise for Mandy Patinkin, there is one thing that I found lacking, that being his accent which I cannot place. Rather than letting my praise for Mandy Patinkin give more credit than deserved to this flick, I'll stop there. For some bizarre reason director and executive producer Marc Webb runs this project into the ground by exploiting actresses (I use this rather than actor on this occasion only to specify female actors) Lauren Patten and Pardis Saremi, having them do unnecessary, distracting, disjointed sex scenes in a project that pretends to be an Agatha Christie genre piece. Even if it was essential to the plot to see Lauren Patten nude, the extreme lack of chemistry and unbelievability of the scenes appear to be injected either to deliberately harm the careers of these actors, or because he simply isn't very good at what he does, "awards" aside. My guess is he has an axe to grind and is taking it out on his cast.
As for plot, there isn't much here. A locked room mystery that is forced, has lots of irrelevant interviews that are supposed to make the viewer believe that the main character is "brilliant", when in reality, the director instead chooses to over explain everything in hopes that the massive holes in the story will be hidden among all of the trashy, unnecessary and unwanted dialog. I give Mr. Patinkin a 9 for performance, the rest of the cast a 4, the writing a 5, and the directing a 2 for an overall score of 6, all riding on the coattails of Mandy Patinkin.
As for plot, there isn't much here. A locked room mystery that is forced, has lots of irrelevant interviews that are supposed to make the viewer believe that the main character is "brilliant", when in reality, the director instead chooses to over explain everything in hopes that the massive holes in the story will be hidden among all of the trashy, unnecessary and unwanted dialog. I give Mr. Patinkin a 9 for performance, the rest of the cast a 4, the writing a 5, and the directing a 2 for an overall score of 6, all riding on the coattails of Mandy Patinkin.