Watch Curtain: Poirot's Last Case For Free

Thanks for the memories!

Simply Perfect

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Best movie ever!

Agatha Christie. Wow. If she was still around movies would be so much better. This tale is chilling (in a good way) once you figure out what is going on. Great job.

David Suchet's wish to film all the Poirot stories come to fruition in this final tale written by Agatha Christie where Poirot is now old, ill and knocking on death's door.The setting of the television adaptations has always been the 1930s but here we jump forward to the late 1940s and the post world war 2 setting.Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser) returns to see his old friend and also his daughter staying in Styles once a grand family house now a hotel. This was also the setting for a murder that Hastings and Poirot once investigated.The look of the film is that of a melancholy gloom, we know that Poirot is reaching the end of the road. In recent television adventures we see Poirot being a pious Catholic and rather absolute that murder is wrong.This has been leading up to something that the producers and even Suchet decided to devise a route map knowing the contents of the final story.Dead bodies turn up, people attempt to kill, even Hastings nearly succumbs to murder given how much he detests his daughter's latest flame. Yet Poirot realises that there is an Iago like person who is pulling the strings and has pulled them before, enough to send someone over the edge while they act all innocent.Poirot uses his little grey cells to lure this person into a trap, a culprit who actually has never killed anyone yet Poirot thinks is dangerous enough that he would contemplate his own eternal soul to be damned.The feature length films lacked the leanness, exquisiteness, humour and stylish look of the hour long adaptations. They only tended hang together in the final reveal of the murderer and how it was all done as in here. Until then the film felt a little disjointed and gloomy.Still it serves as a nice swansong with Suchet leaving a strong mark in his interpretation of Poirot.

One has to be a brainless fan of Cristie and Poirot(in either the books or series who are somewhat different) to enjoy this episode.Episode is a faithful adaptation of the book in main story points, skillfully fitted to character of Poirot, with his blinkered morality, as developed in later 'darker' episodes of the series.From moral point of view, lousy logic used by Poirot to justify his murdering, and absolving of other murderers who have freely chosen to commit crimes, testify to either severe deterioration of his much referenced 'little grey cells', or Cristie's ironic revenge after developing a strong dislike for her character's smug pseudo rationality. Adapters did point to rather hypocritical moral compass of Poirot in several of the later episodes, such as 'The Clocks'. However they never seem to have the courage to carry it through to the end in any of them, and always dropped the ball before exposing the absurdity of Poirot's moral pontificating. They succeeded better when there is a distance between Poirot and characters going through a murder induced moral crisis, as in 'The Murder on the Orient Express'.Here too adapters fail to challenge Poirot's irrational murder. Nor do they leave the story at the superficial moral level Cristie displays in books. Unlike her, they raise the moral issues explicitly and seriously, but instead of confronting them in their complexity, they let Poirot getaway with absurdity.By the way, adapters in later part of series tried to imply that Poirot's blinkered morality is due to his pious Catholicism. However some of his moral positions do not fit with the Catholic teachings. If he is confused it due to his brain being confused.Actors were good in the episode, but unlike in almost all episodes in series, up to but not including final season, production design was bad.

I really don't like to admit this, but CURTAIN has to be one of the weakest entries in the entire Poirot canon. Hettie Macdonald's production sets up an intriguing situation, but the resolution is weak in the extreme, with the surprise plot-twist involving Poirot himself seeming particularly implausible. I realize that this is probably in the source-text, and that screenwriter Kevin Elyot was trying to make the best of a weakly plotted book, but for me the episode simply did not work in televisual terms. On the other hand there were incidental pleasures; it was nice to see Hugh Fraser returning as Hastings, the eternal innocent unable to see what was distinctly in front of him, supported by a clutch of memorable cameos from Aidan McArdle, Helen Baxendale and Anne Reid as a particularly sour-faced old woman. The lighting was appropriately shadowy, making every character in the episode seem suspicious. Towering above everything was David Suchet's masterly performance as Poirot - as the detective taking his last bow on the stage, he was both clear-eyed yet moving as he realized that he no longer possessed the physical capacities to solve any more cases. He has been easily one of the best - if not the best - Christie characterization in any media adaptation of her work.