Teresa Reviews Checkmate (2022) (Min Guo Da Zhen Tan)

Teresa reviews Checkmate (2022) (Min Guo Da Zhen Tan) and loved the Murder on the Orient Express arc that made up the first three episodes.

Source: YouTube (click on the CC button to turn on the English translation captions)

First Episode

Second Episode

Third Episode

Fourth Episode

Fidelity to text: 3 knives

Fewer suspects, cold northern China, and that’s not Poirot or Hastings.

Quality of film on its own: 4 knives

Gorgeous to look at, and the surrounding story sets up our hero’s isolation and fulfills his need for justice.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

IQiyi, a Chinese studio, licensed seven Poirot novels and one short story, and made something fresh and new in the 24-episode series Checkmate. They replaced Poirot with an idealistic young prosecuting attorney gifted with Sherlock Holmes’ attention to detail and added a big story arc tying the seven novels and the short story together.

This version of Orient Express was a three-episode story arc (with fifteen minutes dedicated to finishing the story in the fourth), so the story comes in at 2½ hours. As usual for the foreign adaptations, I’ll use the novel’s names when I can.

This is not the first time someone strung together her stories. In fact, Christie was the first to do it. Remember The Big Four (1927)? Stressed by her collapsed marriage to Archie and needing to meet her publisher’s deadline, she and her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie, combined a batch of Poirot short stories to create a story arc involving a vast worldwide criminal conspiracy.

This radical reworking of Agatha’s stories was also used in the first season of French TV’s Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie, with Commissaire Jean Larosière replacing Poirot.

The Chinese version did the same thing, but with some important differences. Although he is a prosecutor, Si Tu Yan is much more like a young Poirot than Larosière. Luo Shao Chuan acts as Si Tu Yan’s Hastings, but unlike Inspector Émile Lampion in the French version, Luo Shao Chuan isn’t gay and seems to come from money. More importantly, the episodes of Les Petits Meurtres were police procedurals with little continuity between installments.

Checkmate is set in about 1920, during the era of the Republic of China (1912-1949). Ma Shi Ying (Samuel Ratchett) murders a local politician at the train station in front of hundreds of witnesses. In court, Si Tu is doing his summation, sure that he’ll convict Ratchett of murder. Then, disaster. An unnamed official shows up and claims that Ratchett can’t be convicted as he’s no longer a Chinese citizen, but a Russian one and has immunity.

To Si Tu’s horror, the judge agrees that this obviously trumped-up evidence overrides the entire case. The camera pans across the agog courtroom spectators. You’ll recognize some of those faces later. Si Tu resigns in disgust and is disgraced in newspapers across China, claiming that it was his incompetence that led to the wrongful trial.

He knows something’s gone very, very wrong with the judicial system but he doesn’t know, yet, that something bigger is happening. During his last meal in Peking, Si Tu runs into Luo Shao at an outdoor noodle stand. Luo Shao has nothing but contempt for that worthless prosecutor, but he rethinks his assumption when his pistol is stolen and Si Tu solves the case and displays his passion for justice.

They meet again at the train to Harbin. Si Tu is sitting in third class with the rest of the rabble when Luo Shao rescues him and insists that he stay in first class. How can Luo Shao, who looks like he’s military police, force the train’s apprehensive conductor (Pierre-Paul Michel) to do this? Hard to say. The conductor refers to him as “Young Master.” Perhaps his family owns the train? Clearly there’s more to Luo Shao than meets the eye.

Si Tu accepts the first-class compartment because a) it’s the most luxurious train on Earth and b) whoever had bought the ticket didn’t show up. To his fury and disgust, Samuel Ratchett is on the same train, in the same first-class car.

The first-class car to Harbin is full. We gradually meet the rest of the passengers. There are nine of them, and they’re a very mixed bag: Samuel Ratchett’s secretary (Hector McQueen); a university student (Mary Debenham); a grieving older woman (Yu Qin’s mother who has no corollary in the novel); a flamboyant courtesan (Mrs. Hubbard); an American diplomat and his hidden wife (Count and Countess Andrenyi); a former soldier (Col. Arbuthnot); a princess (Princess Dragomiroff); and her maid (Hildegarde Schmidt).

This Ratchett sneers at Si Tu. He got away with murder and he’s glad. He doesn’t need to ask some loser lawyer for help.

Things go bump in the night on the train, lots of running up and down the passageway, and it’s forced to stop because of damage to the rails. In the morning, the conductor and the secretary discover Ratchett’s body. The window is open, letting in the freezing cold. There are clues scattered about. A doctor recruited from second-class says that Ratchett was stabbed nine times, almost at random.

Events proceed as you’d expect. Si Tu realizes that someone’s trying to fool him into thinking that the murderer escaped the train into the snow. He works out the connections between the nine strangers and Ratchett. They were there because Ratchett had murdered Yu Qin and her daughter. They were denied justice because Ratchett had connections and they did not.

It’s at this point that Checkmate diverges from the novel again. Ratchett’s connections are far-reaching; they also saved him in Si Tu’s courtroom. The other nine passengers were in the audience where Si Tu was the prosecuting attorney. They wanted to see justice done and were again denied.

Mary Debenham takes the blame. She was twelve when Ratchett murdered Yi Qin and her daughter. She still blames herself because she told Ratchett there was no man in the house. She murdered Yi Qin. She is willing to face trial because murderers deserve punishment. The others leap to her defense and Si Tu must choose: Does the spirit of the law matter more than the letter? It does. Justice denied is not justice and the Yi Qin family has suffered enough.

The story unfolds over three episodes, with the climax occupying the first fifteen minutes of episode four. The story then moves onto the wintry city of Harbin, where Si Tu goes to the house of his mentor and discovers he died of a heart attack. He meets Luo Shao again. Luo Shao’s father dies under more mysterious circumstances. He asks Si Tu to discover what happened and the next three episodes become a retelling of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But underneath that is the season-wide arc.

As you watch the 24 episodes, you’ll see reworkings of Cat Among the Pigeons; One, Two, Buckle My Shoe; Five Little Pigs; “The Kidnapped Prime Minister;” Three Act Tragedy; and Curtain. Si Tu will become a respected private detective in Harbin. He’ll develop a team. Luo Shao will be his Hastings. The eager young reporter from the train will join them to solve the crimes, as will two young ladies with mysterious pasts. Eventually, Si Tu and Luo Shao will uncover a vast conspiracy stretching across China.

After the first three episodes, all the action takes place in Harbin, known as the Ice City. This large city is far to the north, closer to Russia than to Shanghai or Beijing. It’s a different China than what you normally see. Much of the filming was done during the winter so not all that snow is computer generated.

The Republic of China won’t be what you expect either. They were fighting for their sovereignty; struggling with regional warlords tearing the country apart as well as interference from other countries like Russia.

Checkmate is a very different take on Agatha Christie’s novels. Give it a try and see her in a whole new way.