....David Suchet's 2000 version of the same story, "Lord Edgeware Dies", is even better. That makes the score Ustinov-Suchet 1-1, since I preferred Ustinov's version of "Evil Under the Sun". I guess I could use "Death on the Nile" as the tiebreaker, but the 1978 film is one of my long-time favorites, and I don't really feel the need to see another version. Anyway, back to "Thirteen at Dinner". There are 2 main reasons why this is better than "Dead Man's Folly" and "Murder in Three Acts": the comedy is more restrained, and the film is shot on location around London; in fact, it's pretty close in flavor (apart from the updating to the 80's, of course) to the Suchet series - we see Poirot in his apartment, Hastings reading his newspaper, and of course Suchet himself appears as Inspector Japp. However, the story (one of Agatha Christie's most brilliantly simple ones) is not as well-illustrated here as it is in the Suchet version: without going into too many details, I'll only say that in the 2000 film we SEE what happens during the night of Lord Edgeware's murder, so when it is revealed at the end what REALLY happened, it comes as more of a shock. In this film, Japp simply comes to Poirot's apartment in the morning and announces the murder, and we only see the events of the night at the end, narrated by Poirot. Faye Dunaway might be a little better than Helen Grace (who was also very good) as Jane Wilkinson, and the fact that she also plays Carlotta Adams certainly makes the "impersonation" part of the plot more believable, but for someone who is second-billed she doesn't really have THAT much screen time, unlike Grace who almost dominated her picture. As for Jonathan Cecil's Hastings, he is just about acceptable this time. (**1/2)
Review of Thirteen at Dinner
Thirteen at Dinner
(1985 TV Movie)
The best of Peter Ustinov's made-for-TV Poirot movies, but....
5 June 2008