When I sat down to watch "Crooked House" it was solely because it had Julian Sands on the cast list, as he is one of my all-time favorite actors. I had not heard about this movie prior to finding it because of his acting credits.And this being an Agatha Christie thing didn't really do much to entice me. But still, I decided to sit down and watch it.I must say that this movie was somewhat of a swing and a miss for me. It was not overly interesting, nor was it a movie that I really delved and immersed myself into. The plot just felt incoherent to me, but perhaps that is because I am not interested in who-did-it-murder-plots.What worked for "Crooked House" was the impressive cast list, which included Glenn Close, Julian Sands, Gillian Anderson and Terence Stamp. Yet, in my opinion, not even these performers could manage to do much for the story or the movie as such.I managed to endure the movie all the way to the end, although my attention was failing a couple of times throughout the course of the movie."Crooked House" is not the type of movie that you will watch more than once.

Great cast, excelllent plot, and an unexpected ending. Add in a very good script and perfect scenery. From my experience it's one of Agatha Christie's best. My only two concerns were that the volume of the sound rose to ear piercing levels when any music came on, and there were so many characters that I sometimes got confused as to who was married to who and the relationships between them.

Too many potential murderers, too little time to put them in the spotlight. You just can't justifiably make a feature film based on an intricate detective story like this. The audience doesn't get any chance to fathom all the motives and clues and is left with a bunch of freak characters who all have their reasons, but are each allowed so little screentime that the viewer wouldn't care less who has done it. Maybe it would have been better to just skip a few of the characters in order to develop the subplots with more breathing time. Or just make a mini series out of it.

SPOILER: Moles! The cyanide is used to kill moles.I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. Typical of this type of story the first half is relatively boring as we find out there was a murder and we watch the investigator become familiar with all the residents of this sprawling estate, most of them hangers on to the deceased patriarch. Every one of them, boorish rich people, are disrespectful. No characters to pull for.Still in spite of all that the last 30 minutes or so are pretty interesting as the clues come together and it becomes clear who the murderer is and with this type of story it is among those you would least expect.Good acting by all, a worthwhile watch for fans of this type of mystery.