She’s a hypocrite, a bully, and the worst kind of Christian. But he pushes the chair away and Hugo gets justice.Įmily Brent (Miranda Richardson)We finally get to see more of Emily Brent, spinster, than in previous versions. Even in the face of eternity, she desperately uses her wiles on him. Justice Wargrave gives her a chance to beg for her life and she does, saying she can get them both off. We learn near the end that Hugo figured out that she was a liar. She sent Cyril off to drown so his uncle Hugo would inherit, she’d marry Hugo (whom she supposedly loves), and become the lady of the manor. That makes the revelation of her true character all the more horrifying. In the novel, she disliked that snotty brat. Think we were kidding?Vera’s arc is designed to make you believe that she’s an innocent victim of circumstance, still grieving over Cyril’s death. She’s attracted too and no wonder since he parades for her (and us) in a very low-slung towel. He’s attracted to Vera from the moment he spots a flash of her thigh on the train to the island. Unlike everyone else, he’s suspicious of Justice Wargrave. A born predator, he realizes almost at once that they’re being hunted. He’s more action-oriented than I’ve seen in other adaptations. He still murdered (at least) 21 people but this time over diamonds rather than leaving his African soldiers to die in the bush while he saved his skin. Edward Armstrong (Toby Stephens) and General MacArthur (Sam Neill).Lombard got a bit of rewriting from the novel. It’s great to learn that our hero (Philip Lombard) and our heroine (Vera Claythorne) not only fall in love and escape with their lives, but they aren’t murderers. The vast majority of adaptations follow the play’s ending. But she utilized every minute of those three hours and rewrites to make the closest version yet of the novel. She had three hours to give us backstory and humanize the island’s visitors. Yes, she altered details to make the film more cinematic and less novelistic. No, scriptwriter Sarah Phelps did not use Agatha’s dialog. It’s an odd fault in a movie that was carefully scripted, designed, cast, and shot to follow Agatha’s novel almost to the letter. They might as well be futuristic alien ants. Nothing individualistic about any of them. They all looked the same to me amorphous, blocky, vaguely humanoid green glass. However, the camera pans over them so fast that if they vary in how they look, to line up with their corresponding character, I couldn’t tell. Each one supposedly represents one of the ten deserving victims of U. Those modernistic pieces of glass that get shattered, one by one, are apparently each unique. The poem at its center has morphed into “Ten Little Soldiers.” Thus, the default name for Agatha’s seminal novel has become And Then There Were None. We can’t use the replacement title either because it’s also becoming problematic. My big quibble is the soldier statuettes.īecause we’re so enlightened these days, we can’t use Agatha’s original title (look it up). Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.Īlso, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast. Gorgeously cast, scripted, shot, acted, and set designed. This is the novel: gruesome, paranoid, atmospheric, horrifying, and, as God is my witness, the unlucky visitors earned their fates. The typical adaptation sticks with the play’s ending. Teresa reviews “And Then There Were None” (2015) and thought Sarah Phelps version killed it.
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