Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

davidjanuzbrown Basically Agatha Christie is not my cup of tea (Exceptions: "And Then There Were None" & "Murder On The Orient Express"), but this film is different. The reason is Leslie-Anne Down (Bridget Conway), beautiful as always (And perhaps never more so than in this film). Spoilers: The basis for the film is interesting where Luke Williams (Bill Bixby) meets Lavinia Fullerton (Helen Hayes) on a train heading for London because of the mysterious deaths happening in her small Village. When he sees her get run over by a car, and get killed, he realized it is statistically impossible for so many deaths in one small town to occur, so he decides to play amateur detective and prove his theory correct. There he meets and falls in love with Bridget( Who is engaged to a much older man (Major Horton (Patrick Allen). Now although his computer said Bridget was the killer, he refused to believe it, and of course, she is not. Who is the killer? It was pretty obvious, but I will not say. Needless to say, at the end, Maj. Horton who also is NOT the killer, realizes that marriage is not for him, and Luke has a very quick marriage proposal for Bridget, which of course, she accepts and they leave the village and live Happily Ever After. I give it 9/10 stars, mostly for Leslie-Anne but also for Constable Reed (Freddy Jones) who is a fun chap always loving to ride his bike, and is very happy when the small town returns to normal.

Jonny When Luke Williams meets an eccentric old English woman on the train and she tells him she knows of three murders and she is subsequently murdered, I felt that the film had started well and was likely to develop into a good whodunit. Unfortunately, it was down hill from there on.With one exception, the suspects are wooden, providing little other than simply having a list of suspects to consider. The exception is Bridget Conway, the object of the Luke Williams' desire. Attractive as she (Lesley-Anne Down) is though, there is a limit to how often I want to see close ups of her facial expressions.The plot - will Bridget Conway prove to be the murderer damming Luke Williams hopes or will it be someone else? - first stumbles along and then grinds its way to an inevitable slushy conclusion.

TheLittleSongbird This is not an outstanding film by all means, but it is a very decent one, that is faithful in story, tone and dialogue to the book. The story is compelling and interesting, hindered only really by the nonsense with the computers which was underdeveloped and added very little to the story.The pace starts very briskly, and Helen Hayes brings a lot of charm to her brief role, but once more in the story unfolds it gets slower up to the conclusion, which is well-paced and rounds things off nicely as it should do. Bill Bixby starts off rather wooden and dull, but gets better.That said, the production values are excellent, the photography is pleasing on the eye and the costumes and scenery are beautiful. The music has some nice parts as well, the direction is decent and the dialogue is charming, controlled and witty. The cast do do very well, while some of the characters could have been developed a tad more, the cast do great jobs especially Lesley-Anne Down, Olivia DeHavilland and Timothy West.All in all, a decent film and adaptation. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Neil Doyle Agatha Christie's 'Murder Is Easy' gets off to a brisk start with Helen Hayes as a little old lady on her way to Scotland Yard to report a series of murders in her village. She describes the look that made her realize who the murderer is and tells Bill Bixby, "If no one suspects you, murder is easy." Shortly after she leaves the train station, she is killed in an auto accident. Thus, Bixby decides to investigate for himself. Carmen Culver's teleplay would have been better if it hadn't updated the Christie material and tried to modernize the story with foolish computer nonsense. Furthermore, by devoting entirely too much time to the red herrings and focusing almost all of the remaining time on Lesley-Anne Down and Bill Bixby's growing relationship, it turns the surprise ending into little more than a sham for which there is no preparation. Bill Bixby's character in the novel was a young policeman--here he is an American computer wizard who delves into use of the computer (to no avail) to solve the crime. He's charming and believable enough but too many scenes are throwaways involving him and Lesley-Anne Down. Suffice it to say that this is not one of the best adaptations of Christie's work. The technical aspects are excellent--the color photography of the English settings is impressive and all of the performances are first-rate. Nice to see Olivia de Havilland and Helen Hayes as "special guest stars". Helen Hayes contributes so much to the opening scenes that she makes up for the fact that there is no Miss Marple in this one. But the tight suspense of the final scenes in the novel when the murderer is caught and revealed is missing here and the explanations are too swift to carry much weight. Still, an absorbing who-dun-it for mystery fans although modernizing the story with computer detection work is no help at all.