Perry Kate
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Colibel
Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.
Konterr
Brilliant and touching
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
Prismark10
There are two plots into one here, plenty of coincidences and a lot of red herrings offered here as well. At least there is enough plot to justify the longer running time which I felt was not always the case with the longer Poirot stories.Lt Colin Race is investigating a spy ring when he finds a distraught young woman who has come across a stabbed man in the home of a blind lady, a home with lots of clocks showing the wrong time.Lt Race's father was an acquaintance of Poirot and he asks for his help and Poirot comes down to Dover to investigate with Inspector Hardcastle who is a little out of his depth. The young woman worked for a company providing secretarial services. The Crescent where the dead body was found contains a host of colourful but slightly sinister characters.It is nicely shot and for the later Poirot adaptations it contains more humour.
secretstina
I really liked "The Clocks", I think it's because I got all emotional over that love story! I really felt sympathetic for Rosemary Sheila Webb, and that is a sign of good acting, right? (Also, I noticed to my amusement that Tom Burke looks a tiny bit like a less-girly, more-handsome Edward Cullen.) The music also created an atmosphere that was more dark and emotional than usual. Without Hastings, Japp, or Lemon, this movie is more "let's save this young girl from being wrongly convicted" than "let's make jokes and watch Poirot be whimsical", if that makes sense. Not only is this movie more serious than most in the series, but it is also more focused on the characters Colin and Sheila and less on Poirot himself.I agree with other reviewers that it was strange how the spy plot and the murder plot actually turn out to be completely separate. I also thought the murderer became obvious pretty early on. Still, the full details of the resolution did surprise me in the end and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie despite, as some have pointed out, the extraordinary coincidences it would have taken to make it all possible.
richard.fuller1
I did this with the movie Se7en with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.The understanding of a killer is really very simplistic to say the least, and Se7en didn't fit, using the Deadly Sins as a reason to commit the crimes, but it relied too much on outside sources to progress his deeds, similar to BTK, but that one did a lot of meaningless fluff.So what do we have here with Clocks. First, remove the entire spy plot, as it is only connected in the corpse was put in the spy's apartment as obviously no one would think a blind woman committed the crime.So now, we want to get rid of the man who can identify the woman as not being the wife receiving the inheritance. In truth, wouldn't it have been easier to simply club him over the head and dump him in the river? Or at best, pay him off, as they ended up having to do with the actress anyway.The availability of the blind woman's apartment, I can follow, but with nosy neighbors (which was really kind of intended to be the focus of this story), a lot of the disguise (the laundry truck) now becomes obvious.So the boss lady disliked the young woman, so she decided to frame her for the crime by getting her to the apartment she has never been to before.Yes, this all unraveled once more, but it seems like once the old blind woman said she called no one to do dictation, that should have made the police suspicious as well.The criminals seemed to think, we'll just say I received the phone call, the old woman will say she called for no one and no one will believe the young girl.In truth, the clocks were a rather bad addition. They were found in the apartment and the old woman knew nothing about them. So why would the young girl take the silly clocks there if she intended on killing the man? What we are then left with is really clumsy killers, hardly worthy of Poirot's attention. it seemed more like the spy plot was added or included (by Christie, not by any filmmaker here, tho i've never read the books) to justify international detective Poirot's presence.There have been more fun mysteries with 'not seeming like it is' and 'not being told what we are seeing' and again, in truth, this one had that, with who the murdered man actually was.But then to strangle a girl in a phone booth and club the actress, again, wouldn't it have just been easier to pay off the guy, or club him over the head and throw him in the river? Criminals really don't put this much effort into framing someone into the crime. Just dump the body in the old lady's room and send no one there. Let the old girl explain who he is and how he got there, instead of putting a young girl who works for your business all into the mix.
Neil Doyle
This has to be the most disappointing of all the Agatha Christie stories brought to the TV screen by Masterpiece Theater and starring David SUCHET as the mastermind detective Hercule Poirot.The story is so far-fetched in concept and cluttered with such a lot of nonsense about a spy plot and the sinister group of people involved, with every facet of the story straining credibility from the start. And this, despite a fine central performance by ANNA MASSEY as a blind receptionist who finds a murdered man behind her sofa and is unable to explain either his identity or the circumstances of his death.As usual, the production values are excellent and the acting by all concerned is on a high level of expertise. But the story seems so absurd and is hard to follow once the various details come to light, making it appear that even Poirot will be unable to unwind the tangled mess of events.Very disappointing and certainly not one of Agatha Christie's more credible mysteries.