Reviews

CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Too long, mostly full of unnecessary and sometimes even horribly jarring and badly acted back stories of several characters that start to annoy very quickly. Also, as the story progress, more and more stupidities of the script starts to annoy and eats the credibility, eventually making the watching of the story unfold painful. I could list major idiotic things but I value my time more.

Last, the political message it gives, or rather pounds it in, I don't like it at all. That giving money to terrorist kidnappers is OK. Shame on the propaganda.

Rather poor series, too long and weak script. 3 stars.

SPOILERS AHEAD !!!

This episode was frustrating to no end. I can't believe the high ratings and that others didn't notice the horrible plot hole.

The problem is that trained FBI agents don't shoot the bad guy when they have the chance, well, they do once but not killing the robber. Instead, again and again and again they allow the robber to flick the detonation switch, which the robber does in plain sight and rather slowly. It's super clear that the bomb/robber doesn't have a "dead man switch", so there's no reason not to shoot him. Stupid. This annoyed the first time it happened.. and then it repeats again and again. By the end of it, I was so pi.. irritated that I cherished that the episode ended.

I love Groundhog Day, it's great, the movie and the concept. This could have been amazing but no, they had to mess it up.

2/10 stars.

Contains SPOILERS!

Did I miss something or am I just stupid?

The industrialist manor owner whose wife calls Poirot for help gave a secret document to a Nazi sympathizer because the woman was blackmailing him about selling armor to Japanese years back, a case that was dismissed in England though caused a lot of ruckus. But, the leaked document was falsified and misinformation directed at Nazis. Phew. All well and happy faces everywhere, even in Poirot's face.

But wait! What about the fact that now there was concrete evidence against the manor owning industrialist selling the armor to Japanese?!? Poirot was so disapproving when the blackmail letter and the dastardly deed of selling arms to Japanese was revealed, but after the misinformation feeding to the Nazis was revealed, even Poirot was happy. What?!

Again, did I miss something or am I just stupid? Though, this wouldn't be the first time that Poirot's stories, at least in TV form, would have major plot an/or logic problems.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

A somewhat nice Poirot movie but with at least 2 problems with the plot.

1) This can be debated over but to me it seems illogical to assume that A) the blackmailer (the Indian male character) didn't recognize the rich bankers face when he was impersonating the dentist, and B) banker taking a HUGE risk of getting recognized by the blackmailer.

2) This is a BIG problem. I haven't read the book, maybe the author got away with this detail in a non-visual story (book). The shooting of the dentist is ridiculous. A human is shot with a pistol close range. There seems to be only entry wound. No blood or other "material" splatter. The body is dragged to other room. Then the killer, the banker, "services" the Indian blackmailer and injects lethal dose of novocaine and adrenaline. The dentist patient leaves. Then killer drags the body of the dentist back from the other room. The end result however is that the body is found in a pool of blood, which couldn't come from anything other than the victims head bullet wound. Awfully nice of the dead corpse to start bleeding only after many minutes and being dragged around few times. This just doesn't happen in real life. Maybe the author wasn't very knowledgeable with what happens when you shoot someone.. I don't know, you would assume that she would had researched these things, though this wouldn't be the first HUGE error in authors Poirot stories, there's plenty of them, if you're sharp enough. ;)

The reason why the story is so convoluted and made hard to follow, is that the identity of the lady killer has to be kept somewhat secret.. I noticed it early though. :) In a novel there's no problem because we can't see the faces, so when Poirot meets a certain character, he doesn't know how that persons face should look like, but in a movie, we have already seen the character and notice the different face. That's why this movie is made hard to follow.