In for a Murder 2021 Movie Review Poster Trailer Online

We had to wait a long time for the next film directed by Piotr Mularuk. I mean, as long as someone waited, because I, for example, am not a special fan of Yuma made nine years ago. Although it’s still a production better than W for Murder .

The problem with the latter is that it is not very clear what this movie is supposed to be. There are way too many mushrooms in this borscht. Mularuk throws into it everything that comes to his mind – comedy, crime fiction, drama, satire, romance, commentary on shady business interests and their connections with the world of politics, references to a whole host of other works, mostly not very subtle – enough to mention, that at some point one of the characters directly says something like “it’s just like Agatha Christie” (for many the title of the film itself will evoke obvious associations). Or rather, it would be like Christie, if it were a bit more confusing and however surprising. Meanwhile, the creators give us a story of class B in total, with all the twists painfully obvious and predictable. In for a murder It does not work as a crime story, nor does it work as a comedy, because most of the jokes are just bland, and some – sometimes lasting a whole scene – make you want to collapse under the armchair out of embarrassment.

What is most interesting in the film was treated neglectively. Somewhere below it all there is a story about the protagonist regaining herself, rebuilding her self-confidence and agency, coming out of a marriage that clearly makes her unhappy, in which she is suffocating and unable to be herself, to do what would really please her. It is also connected with the investigation into the case of a friend who disappeared years ago, which had a huge impact on Magda, but the whole thing seems to be a missed opportunity. Mainly because Mularuk wants to catch too many magpies by the tail.

However, one cannot be denied W for murder – it has an excellent main character. Anna Smołowik, who plays Magda, has something incredibly magnetic about her. On the one hand, she is nice, resolute, she can be go-ahead (she gets up with time), on the other hand, you can see that she is deeply unhappy for many different reasons, and she lacks the courage to do something about it. Watching the transformation that goes through just over an hour and a half is addictive and thanks to Smołowik, I do not consider the time spent in the cinema to be completely wasted.

It’s a shame this can’t be said for the rest of the cast. While Paweł Domagała (whom I like very much, so maybe that’s also why) as rather clumsy, but definitely having a good heart, Commissioner Jacek Sikora is fine, the others either disappoint (Szymon Bobrowski, Dorota Segda, Rafał Królikowski) or are horribly kitschy and hard to look at (Piotr Adamczyk). I don’t quite know what it is like with Przemysław Stippa, who plays Magda’s husband – if it was about making you want to punch his hero in the teeth after each point he said, he fulfilled his task perfectly.

So murder , unfortunately, is a weak, shot-shot film, with far too great ambitions that even a much more talented director could not cope with. There was potential somewhere in it, but it was not used. And so we stay with Anna Smołowik (again: she is a great company) and the wonderful scenery of Podkowa Leśna. I stretch a bit of a grade for her, because I went to junior high school there and I know basically every place shown in the film. I am going for a walk there on Sunday, so I will probably visit a few of them.