Charles Hayward is a former Cold War spy turned private detective. His ex-girlfriend Sophia de Haviland hires him to investigate the murder of her grandfather. Hayward visits the mansion where Mr. de Haviland lived with his extended family, every last one of whom is a potential suspect, including Sophia. It's a classic Agatha Christie premise. Crooked House executes it competently, albeit unremarkably.

Netflix classifies Crooked House as film noir. I think that's symptomatic of an inaccurate but common oversimplification of the crime genre as a whole. Anytime there's a murder and someone wears a fedora, it gets called noir. I prefer the definition I first heard from Roger Ebert: film noir is "a movie where an ordinary guy indulges the weak side of his character, and hell opens up beneath his feet." Charles Hayward gets his hands a little dirty, but he's not as fatally flawed as the protagonists of Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice.

The performances are just okay, which is a little disappointing. I expected better from a cast that includes Glenn Close, Terrence Stamp, Gillian Anderson, and Christina Hendricks. Occasionally they play it too broad, with a few scenes feeling accidentally parodic.

The mystery's solution is anticlimactic. The revelation of the killer feels rushed and uninspired compared to Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot at their finest. The Cold War element feels tacked on; the occasional sly references to an espionage angle ultimately go nowhere. Crooked House is a passable diversion for whodunit aficionados, but there's an abundance of other Christie adaptations you'd probably enjoy a lot more.

6 out of 10.

Seen on Netflix.