Time: 118 Minutes
Age Rating: M – Offensive language, violence
Cast:
Helen Mirren as Elizabeth Best
Pierce Brosnan as Ron Ritchie
Ben Kingsley as Professor Ibrahim Arif
Celia Imrie as Joyce Meadowcroft
Director: Chris Columbus

Despite its recognisable cast in the forefront with Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley, I didn’t have high expectations for The Thursday Murder Club. While not every straight to streaming service movie is bad or mediocre, the straight to Netflix murder mystery did look like it was merely just fine. Having seen it, my predictions weren’t too far off the end result, but I still had some fun with it.

The Thursday Murder Club is apparently based on a book series, I can’t comment on how good a job the movie does on adapting those novels. What I can say is that as a murder mystery film, I found it to be just fine, with mild plot twists and plenty of cliches and tropes, and it’s not even like they subverted them or played them with a degree of self awareness. Still, it does have some amusing humour, and delivered very well by the cast.

The cast are really the big appeal of the movie, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan and Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie are entertaining in the lead roles, they are visibly having a great time and share really good chemistry together. David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, and Naomi Ackie are also really good in supporting roles.

Chris Colombus is a good director, but his work for Thursday Murder Club is just steady and fine. It’s so visually bland, it’s the kind of movie where you can tell that it was a straight to streaming film by how it looks alone.

The Thursday Murder Club is a predictable and familiar but entertaining enough murder mystery, elevated by an enjoyable cast.