NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Richard Schneider While a bit of Inspector Morse comes through, Thaw pulls it off with a working class persona. We get to follow him through his investigation, and this is the most appealing type of mystery for me. Thaw's Harry Barnett is as tenacious as is his Morse (created by novelist Colin Dexter). Harry is driven mostly by two forces, his attempt to disprove his involvement in a disappearance of a woman and his lifelong relationship with a wealthy former politician, Alan Dysart. But the more questions he asks, the more questions arise about his longtime friend. The connection between the very beginning of the film and its ending works, provides an added twist (there is one right before the end as well), and brought the (film) story full circle, including the exchange of an important gift between two main characters (Barnett and Dysart), bound together through life experiences. You will not be disappointed. As an author of mystery novels and an observer of the two industries (print & film), the media are so different that I often discount the "it did not follow the book" criticisms. Most viewers of the film never have nor ever will read the novel. We writers need to bank the movie checks and move on to the next book.

TheLittleSongbird I saw this on TV about a year ago, and I liked it. That Christmas, I got the book by Robert Goddard, and I couldn't put it down. It is a brilliant book, and I've also got Sight Unseen, which I'm looking forward to starting. It is a fresh change from reading Agatha Christie, who coincidentally is my favourite author.That said, the TV adaptation, while very different to the book, is pretty solid. John Thaw does his best, with a difficult accent, but looks uncomfortable sometimes. I hate criticising Thaw's acting, because he was one of Britain's finest actors. The letdown however, was the script, it was very clunky, and I didn't like some of the plot changes, like Heather getting killed. The ending was very disappointing, as I didn't understand it. They also missed really important things about Alan Dysart, played by Matthew Marsh, like his hidden homosexuality.However, I liked some of the scenes, such as when Harry first discovers that Heather is missing, and the big house being set on fire, after Peter Kingdom (Miles Anderson) was murdered. Most of the acting is good, the music is suitably ominous and Greece looks beautiful. Another thing that bothered me was this, who killed Peter Kingdom, because that wasn't made obvious.In conclusion, it isn't Thaw's best, but you may like it! 7/10. Bethany Cox

richard.fuller1 Compared to what we get on American tv, it was good. England seems to understand that there can be suspense without having to have calm, cool main characters and it is supposed to be believed that this is intensity.I came into John Thaw's work very indirectly, Inspector Morse would air on ETV as one of the Mystery segments. Of course, he was good.It would take me a while or two to realize that Into The Blue was not the same character, but still the story was fun. Being handed the abandoned baby, the death in the canoe and then the body found on the shore like that all at the beginning, and seeing how they all connected was a good attention-getting story. He got a pretty good ally in Zhora there for a while too. I know nothing about the book, of course, so it was all the first time I had seen the story. I had no problems with it.

ashtree Robert Goddard's splendidly crafted novel brought to the small screen. But Goddard must have been heartbroken to see how his work was changed for television production. John Thaw seems to struggle with a role for which he is completely miscast; and with the whole tenor of the plot changed for compression into a two hour format, this must be one of the more disappointing television adaptations of recent times.