Thirteen-year-old Nick and his slightly dense older brother Herbert run the Diamond Private Detective Agency above Camden Town Tube Station in north-central London. When a master criminal called The Falcon dies, they come into possession of his box of chocolate Maltesers, which contains the secret key to a fabulous cache of diamonds. Can they unravel the mystery and avoid the clutches of seedy lowlifes Brenda Von Falkenberg, Gott and Himmell, The Fat Man and the dogmatic Chief Inspector Snape, all of whom want to find the swag first.
Funded by the UK Children's Film & Television Foundation, this is a fabulous, hilarious private-eye yarn in the style of the classic forties film-noirs, the only difference being that the gumshoe is a pre-pubescent kid with spiky hair. It scores on every level; as a straight-arrow mystery story involving a barcode that opens a hidden panel in a tombstone, as a stylish genre flick full of femme-fatales, a crocodile in a swimming pool, hired muscle and silhouette camera-work, as an action piece with several murders and chases (including a great rampaging run through the toy department at Selfridges department store), and as a side-splitting spoof of genre conventions with oodles of funny dialogue - when pubic-schoolboy bungling assassins Gott and Himmell are tying up our hero, he quips, "If this is what they taught you at Eton, I'm glad I went to a comprehensive school.". The cast have a ball with their off-the-wall characters, particularly Hodge in a dual role as charlady and villainess, York (who sings as well) as a nightclub sweetie called Lauren Bacardi, and the incomparable Paterson as Inspector Snape, who delivers what might well be my favourite disgruntled copper line of all time; when Herbert passes out at the scene of a murder, Snape retorts, "Make him a nice strong cup of tea, and then nick 'im !". This is a clever, well-made, funny, exciting piece of pulp-fiction, beautifully shot, cut and scored and with some great animation and songs, which also happens to be a kid's movie. Brilliantly scripted by Anthony Horowitz, from his fabulously-titled book The Falcon's Malteser. This is the movie Messrs Chandler, Hammett and Cain would have wanted their kids to see - don't miss it.
Funded by the UK Children's Film & Television Foundation, this is a fabulous, hilarious private-eye yarn in the style of the classic forties film-noirs, the only difference being that the gumshoe is a pre-pubescent kid with spiky hair. It scores on every level; as a straight-arrow mystery story involving a barcode that opens a hidden panel in a tombstone, as a stylish genre flick full of femme-fatales, a crocodile in a swimming pool, hired muscle and silhouette camera-work, as an action piece with several murders and chases (including a great rampaging run through the toy department at Selfridges department store), and as a side-splitting spoof of genre conventions with oodles of funny dialogue - when pubic-schoolboy bungling assassins Gott and Himmell are tying up our hero, he quips, "If this is what they taught you at Eton, I'm glad I went to a comprehensive school.". The cast have a ball with their off-the-wall characters, particularly Hodge in a dual role as charlady and villainess, York (who sings as well) as a nightclub sweetie called Lauren Bacardi, and the incomparable Paterson as Inspector Snape, who delivers what might well be my favourite disgruntled copper line of all time; when Herbert passes out at the scene of a murder, Snape retorts, "Make him a nice strong cup of tea, and then nick 'im !". This is a clever, well-made, funny, exciting piece of pulp-fiction, beautifully shot, cut and scored and with some great animation and songs, which also happens to be a kid's movie. Brilliantly scripted by Anthony Horowitz, from his fabulously-titled book The Falcon's Malteser. This is the movie Messrs Chandler, Hammett and Cain would have wanted their kids to see - don't miss it.
