A Deadly Invitation

I know it usually called Murder Mystery - so no pun intended as always if you will. That said, you have to have a special humor and a vested interest in the genre - that is crime movies but also the whodunnit aspect of it all. Are you interested? Do you like it when you can keep guessing? Not that this movie is anywhere close to the greats (that includes the recent Daniel Craig movies with Glass Onion and so many others).

The acting is ok, the movie itself knows what it wants to tell - though the pacing could be better I reckon. We do have some flaws and some inconsistencies to overcome. Nothing too major ... but I also reckon many probably will know where this is heading, before it ends up there ... still it is fun and what more could you ask of a movie?

Booriiiinggg. It is no need to comment too much. I finished 15 minutes and I can say enough fake agatha Christie stories please! This is not convincing. I felt lots of vibes from this movie. Everybody does something very suspicious and also from the beginning in podcast part, she says 'if you look at details, you can solve' and you try to not miss anything and this is really boring. Every scenes are so tiring! I didn't like it. I can say that. I think for this genre, every thing has been said and no new anymore. My words finished here. It was in my list and I think I will not finish the movie. Because it didn't capture me.

This Mexican murder mystery opens with a variety of people being invited to the home of Olivia Uriarte. They include Olivia's sister Agatha, who runs her own true crime podcast; Olivia's ex-husband and other people she knows. When they arrive they are assigned specific rooms but there is no immediate sign of their host. She meets them later aboard a boat. Once together she tells them how each of them has a motive to kill somebody in the group. In the morning Olivia is found dead. To complicate matters at the time the boat is positioned where two police jurisdictions meet. While it is decided who should investigate the guests stay in the house and a junior police officer along with Agatha start asking questions and exposing secrets.

I thought this will was okay; not terrible but not great either. The mystery is intriguing enough and there are some decent twists but there is also far too much standing around talking. I know some viewers had a problem with the main investigator being an amateur rather than the police officer but that has been a genre staple for about as long as there have been murder mystery stories. Inevitably there are quite a few clichés but the final resolution worked for me and felt somewhat original. The acting is decent enough and the location used is impressive. Overall It is distinctly sub-Christie but is okay if you like the genre and fancy watching something set somewhere more exotic than the typical English village.

These comments are based on watching the film in Spanish with English subtitles.

Agatha gets invited to join her sister Olivia's yacht party along with several other elite people. Agatha is a crime enthusiast and runs her own podcast. On the yacht, Olivia reveals the one of her guest won't make it back to the shore and that they will have contemplate their lives up until then as that boat ride could be their last. As they are woken up to a thud leading to a dead Olivia in the high seas, it is upto Agatha to solve the mystery and catch the culprit. How she does that forms rest of the story.

The film gets derailed once the on screen death happens and it barely gives enough to buy into the mystery. Since the whole reveal was about delivering the what the flower stood for, let me try to put forth my analogy in those terms..

1. Love = The makers feel the bunch of characters they have are enough to pull off this story. But there is literal lack of bonding between then especially Agatha and Olivia, who are sisters while there is a mention of loss of a loved one that got them distant but, the death of Olivia barely gets any emotion out of Agatha who at best is an amateur crime enthusiast solving the mystery in an hackneyed manner. There is enough love for the genre but nothing transcends onto the screen.

2. Justice = The whole reveal has this as a major aim i.e. Get justice to the deserving. Sadly, the writing denies it as the reveal itself is far from convicinving and the way it is narrated, just complicates it further when seen from a broad perspective, the crime was pretty much over simplified as it is and so were the main suspects.

3. Forgiveness = It is a bit hard to but as an audience, will have to forgive the makers for a bland product. For all the talk about able to forgive and move on, among the characters, it comes way too late and hardly has any impact.

4. Freedom = the film ended and the instant feeling I got was, well Freedom. Not that I kept comparing it with the recent murder mystery films including the Knives Out, but the weak writing made this a tiresome experience, enough to feel free once the film ended. Also, there was no need to show the police as so dummies, glad they were free to from this case in the end.

A bunch of quirky personalities are assembled at an exclusive Mexican location only to realize there may be a killer in their midst. So right away we know this is a NAFTA-knockoff of Agatha Christie; and it's more or less what you'd expect. The cast is charming and the movie maintains an affable darkly-comedic tone. There are two major flaws. First the movie extols the viewer to follow along and solve the mystery; but it doesn't provide enough information and the solution relies on flashback exposition dumps. Second it spends far too little time setting up the mystery and potential red herrings; and far too much time on explicating the resolution. Overall reasonably enjoyable but not as good as it could or should have been.