Details, details

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2006)

Granted, the movie isn't trying to be CSI, but the London cops were slipshod to the point of stupidity in their "investigation" of the murders. First of all, the fact that the women were killed with a shotgun should have raised eyebrows right off the bat. What criminal goes around carrying a weapon so difficult to conceal as a shotgun? The cops rationalize this by saying that it was a sawed-off shotgun. But any seasoned forensics person should have recognized immediately that the pattern of the shotgun pellets on the bodies was not that of a sawed-off gun, because a sawed-off shotgun sprays shot out in a widely dispersed pattern, not the tight pattern that the choked shotgun that he took from his father-in-law would make. In other words, the wounds that would be inflicted by these two different types of barrels (sawed-off and choked) would be quite different and quite apparent to any good forensics lab.
Secondly, if a criminal were to choose a shotgun as his concealed carry weapon he surely would not have used the type of shot that Chris would have found in his father-in-law's ammo pouch, which would have been a light load of small pellets suitable for shooting clay pigeons or small game birds. If you want to kill someone with a shotgun, you'd use a heavy load and something like BB shot. Again, this would have been a no-brainer for the forensics lab, and should have cast strong suspicion on Chris, who, as a rich upper-class Englishman would have had access to just this sort of gun and ammunition.
It is also remarkable that the cops didn't question the fact that there was no sign of forced entry into the old lady's apartment. When Chris came to her door she said that she never let in anyone she didn't know. So how would some lowlife druggie get into her apartment? And, for that matter, how did the cops know that drugs had been stolen? Unless the victim is alive to tell you what was stolen, how do you know what used to be there that is no longer there because it was stolen? Same with her jewelry. If you don't know what jewelry she had, how do you know any was stolen?
Then there is the crucial coincidence of the old lady's letting Chris wander into the TV room alone, where he then, of course, has time to assemble the shotgun. He had to have time to put the gun together. How did he expect to accomplish that? He couldn't possibly have known that the old lady would leave him alone for a few minutes and he couldn't very well take out the gun and assemble it while she was standing there watching him. So that scene was really a stretch, rather obviously unrealistic.
Finally, there is the quite reasonable question of how someone could fire two shotgun blasts in an apartment building -- one in the open hallway -- and not have anyone hear it. And then, on top of that, Chris apparently (although we don't see this) has time to disassemble the gun and put it back in his bag. Not bloody likely; but this, too, is glossed over, and the cops seem never to have investigated any of this.
But, guess what... I still liked the film enormously. I loved the tennis metaphor and that beautifully pregnant scene where the ring hits the railing and falls back on the sidewalk and you suddenly realize what all that talk about luck was all about in the beginning.