Ruining the Good Name of the Mystery...

Rating: 2/10 (14 February 2007)

A true mystery cannot include supernatural action or agents unknown to science, nor any physical impossibilities (or even improbabilities).
The enjoyment that one gets from watching a mystery unfold is in the collection of clues by a gifted amateur detective (either a character in the story, or the audience itself with some aid from the script), the clever mis-direction and art of the author, and a satisfying conclusion.
The conclusion is the key -- it must be innovative, and coherent. (Agatha Christie, of course, was the master. Everyone on the Orient Express did it; that's original, and satisfying. The police officer set the Mousetrap; that's original, and satisfying. The hanging judge faked his own death in order to direct suspicion elsewhere; that's original, and satisfying.)
What is the point of crafting a lenghty story, and then saying at the end: "Yes, it all WAS possible, see? The existence of the *flibbertigibbet machine* means that it could have happened."
A 'twist' that amounts to "I, the writer, can do whatever I damn well please" is simply hackneyed.
'Electrical cloning' is impossible. It cannot be done. Saying it can -- and was, by Nikola Tesla -- is idiotic.
While we're throwing around impossibilities concerning historical figures, we might as well just make a film about Queen Elizabeth I conquering Mars, or Julius Caesar inventing time travel using silver coins and sunshine.
What an absolute waste of my time.
PS. If the machine was a diversion -- all of the flashbacks and double-crosses muddied the story sufficiently to allow the possibility -- I still want to know why there are human forms in all of the many water tanks in the warehouse at the end of the film.
The question the author wants us to ask is: are these the dead canaries, so to speak, or are they yet another layer of mis-direction?
I think I can say this: if this were just another layer, and I am supposed to believe that the human forms are manniquins or stolen corpses, I am even more angry with the author. A pathetically low level of storytelling would have been reached.
Both choices come out to the same result: a horrific stain on the good name of the mystery.