Wonderfully offbeat film!

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

It's Difficult NOT To Enjoy This Movie

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

"The Mysterious Affair at Styles" marks Poirot's first mystery. Interestingly, Poirot's first and last cases take place at Styles.Here he reconnects with a friend, Captain Hastings, whom he has not seen in some time. Hastings is recovering from an injury he received during World War I. He is staying in a mansion that has been conscripted as a hospital.In the beginning, we see Hastings and other patients watching the newsreels which shows Belgian refugees arriving in England. This is how Poirot first came to England.Hastings has an old friend who invites him to his place, Styles Court. He confides in Hastings that his mother has married a younger man, Alfred Inglethorp. The whole family believes that he is a golddigger.Not long after that, Emily Inglethorp is murdered by strychnine. Hastings appeals to Poirot to investigate. Inglethorp is the obvious suspect, but are things as they seem? This is a beautifully made episode that displays the era with perfection. The story has a couple of holes, but Poirot's deductions are excellent, and even if you know the denouement, you will be intrigued by the way it unfolds.David Suchet is the best Poirot - fastidious, cheerfully egomaniacal, and eccentric. Delightful episode.

Unlike the other episodes I've seen, this one is set during the Great War, after one of the battles at Ypres. (Kids, that's pronounced EEP-rah. Well, kind of. The Great War ran its course from 1914 to 1918 -- AD -- and was fought before we learned to start numbering them. The result of the battle was a pile of dead and mangled bodies on both sides. PS: The English were fighting the Germans.) It's surprising to see characters waltzing around in wardrobe a la mode 1915. Many of the ladies had long flowing dresses that swept the floor when they walked. They wore high lace collars and often their hair was swept up on their heads in a configuration resembling that of a soccer ball or some kind of Gugelhupf.The costumes, cars, and many props are of the period. Some props must have been carried over from the episodes set in the 1930s -- books and knick knacks -- but the producers must have dug deep to come up with so much new in the way of forms. I'd always thought of the BBC's Poirot productions as having some kind of massive chest of 1930s objects into which they dug for props and clothes. Now I have to add a massive chest for their period romances and even for their adaptations of Dickens. They had to put the 1935 bus away in the garage and dust off the 1914 model, for instance.I'd like to add that wardrobe and props tend to be precise about these things. I had a prominent role in "The Road To Wellville." You can see the back of my head in the scene in which the kid farts in church. That scene was set in 1895. Another scene was set ten years later, and they had different sets of SHOES for the extras, depending on the date.As far as this movie is concerned, I rather enjoyed it. True, I got some of the characters and their names mixed up. I usually do. These ensemble mysteries could actually benefit from the use of familiar faces, as Albert Finney' "Murder on the Orient Express" did. However, Poirot's climactic explanation and the dénouement wrapped things up nicely. There isn't really a dull moment.

Set in 1917 and based on Agatha Christie's first book, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" is sort of a prequel to the regular Poirot series (in fact, it reminded me somewhat of the recent Casino Royale - right down to the absence of the classic opening credits and the gradual introduction of the familiar music theme - only the timeline here makes much more sense). Having met before in Belgium, Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings run across each other again in the English country, where they have to solve a perplexing crime - the poisoning of the owner of the huge manor where Hastings was staying as a guest. This is also the first time Hastings meets Inspector Japp (Poirot had known him from before). The production is exceptional (apparently going 2 decades back from their usual timeline was no problem for the cast and crew), and the story will absorb and surprise you. Many little details and clues are well-thought-out, but (and here we are going into "spoilers" territory) an illogical central contrivance is hard to ignore. Simply put, everything connected with "the letter" that the killer writes and that incriminates him/her is complete bull: why doesn't the killer TAKE THE LETTER WITH HIM instead of ripping it to (only 3) pieces and leaving it behind? Why doesn't he come back to get it at a later date, even if he has to break into a locked room? Why does he write the letter in the first place, clearly naming his accomplice? Why does he leave it locked in a place for which his target also has a key? And finally, why does the target, after having read the letter, allow herself to be poisoned in exactly the way described in it? Everything about this "letter" reveals this as Agatha Christie's beginner's work, although as I said in all other respects her story is well-thought-out, intriguing and surprising. (***)

World War One 1917: Lieutenant Hastings (Hugh Fraser) is on sick leave from the army after being wounded in France. His old friend John Cavendish (David Rintoul) invites him to stay at the Cavendish country estate, Styles Court, where there's tension in the family. Cavendish's mother Emily Ingelthorpe (Gillian Barge) has married Albert Ingelthorpe (Michael Cronin) a man twenty years younger than her, and the family believes that he can only be after one thing - her money. That night Emily dies a painful death and the subsequent autopsy reveals that she has been poisoned. In the neighbouring village of Styles St Mary, a number of Belgian refugees have taken up residence including Hastings' old friend Hercule Poirot (David Suchet), the eccentric but clever sleuth who is called in to investigate the murder."The Mysterious Affair At Styles" (1920) was Agatha Christie's first novel and it also introduced her most famous creation to the world, the eccentric little Belgian detective with the egg-shaped head and eccentric mannerisms. This film was made to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Christie's birth in 1890 which fell in 1990. The period detail of World War One was superbly depicted in this film (just look at those automobiles!) Ross Devenish directed the film with care and style while David Suchet, Hugh Fraser and Philip Jackson offered their usual excellent performances. Great care was taken with the supporting cast in which Michael Cronin stands out as the somewhat shifty looking Albert Ingelthorpe."The Mysterious Affair At Styles" has recently been reissued on video and DVD, catch it while you can!