Teresa Reviews “The Lost Mine” (1990)

Fidelity to text: 2 1/2 knives

Lots of rewriting was needed to turn a nothingburger of a story into something worth watching. Expanded scenes, added characters, and florid settings provide an action story instead of a remembrance of things past.

Quality of film on its own: 3 1/2 knives

Most of the time, the rewriting greatly enhanced the plot. Right up until the ending, in fact, when Poirot pulls his solution from his boutonnière vase. He had good clues pointing the way, but not enough factual evidence for me to buy his explanation.

The Lost Mine is a very early short story, originally published in 1923. It’s dull. It’s also clumsy. Poirot tells Hastings about an earlier case to illustrate his point about not indulging in stock speculating because he — naturally — never does. The only speculative stock Poirot owns are shares in a Burmese silver/lead mine, awarded to him as a reward for services rendered. Since all the action took place in the distant past, and we know Poirot succeeded, there’s no risk or drama. It’s bloodless.

Bloodless won’t do for TV. You’ve got to have action or else you’ve got a pair of talking heads, making the viewer switch back to Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China.

The new and improved plot uses virtually every important element of the short story, other than the adversarial, Poirot-loathing Inspector Miller.

Then it adds so much more, beginning with Hastings teaching Poirot to play Monopoly. The game was introduced to Great Britain in 1935 so it stands to reason they’d be playing the exciting new import.

At the same time, Miss Lemon is speculating in stocks, advised by both Hastings (wrong as always) and Poirot (not wrong in his advice). A major stock scheme is described in the newspaper as collapsing, bankrupting thousands. A warning sign about the scheme that Hastings completely missed but reverently describes is that it would pay investors a 100% return. To give Hastings his due, plenty of other, savvier investors missed the same red flag. Poirot and Hastings play the same Monopoly game throughout the episode, providing both a clue to the mystery’s answer and an explanation for the bank error that Poirot suffers from. Unlike in the game, the bank error is not in his favor, nor was it the bank that was at fault.

While Poirot is at the bank, attempting to resolve the bank error, he gets roped into investigating the disappearance of visiting businessman Mr. Wu Ling. That gentleman, according to Lord Pearson of the bank, carries the long-lost map showing the location of the lost Burmese silver mine. Wu Ling arrived in England, checked into his hotel, and then didn’t show up to sell the map to the bank’s board of directors. His body turns up in London’s Chinatown, stabbed in the back several times. According to Inspector Japp, whoever knifed Wu Ling used an Asian-style blade rather than something you’d find in an English kitchen.

While Inspector Japp is interested in murder, he’s more interested in organized crime in Chinatown, involving the Tongs, opium smuggling, illegal gambling, and money laundering. Could Wu Ling have met the wrong person? Is he involved in Japp’s other investigation? Does Poirot’s investigation intersect with Japp’s?

It seems they do, then they don’t, but then they do again. Like a Chinese puzzle box, you might say.

Along the way, a stock speculator gets involved. This is Charles Lester, glad-handing American salesman with a dark secret. According to him, he’s never met Wu Ling. According to his wife, he’s been behaving erratically. According to the hotel clerk, he was the man who met Wu Ling in the hotel’s lobby shortly before his disappearance.

While the plot threads weave themselves together, you’ll get a real treat: a glimpse at cutting-edge police procedures in 1935. It’s radio. No, really! Cars can’t outrun radio waves. Radio transformed law enforcement.

Policewomen with headsets move cars and targets on a huge map of London tracking a criminal, minute by minute, his movements radioed in by assorted watching policemen. The criminal is Reggie Dyer, a man well known to police in many jurisdictions for his underworld dealings. Dyer also apparently met Wu Ling on the boat from China. The hunt for Dyer becomes the now-obligatory chase scene in a Poirot episode, effectively managed from afar by Japp.

As Japp pursues the connection between Dyer and Wu Ling, Poirot seeks an explanation for why a traveler would request matches from a hotel clerk when he has plenty in his luggage. Poirot also closely examines the cigarette butts cramming the ashtray. There’s also a worrying conflict in a key witness’s statements.

Along the way, Japp, Poirot, and Hastings end up in London’s Chinatown. It’s exotic and very different from Poirot’s normal haunts but is it really? It looks different, the signs are written in English and Chinese, the citizens look and dress differently, but they’re still running small businesses and going about their daily lives like anyone else in London.

And like anywhere else in London there are restaurants, street prostitutes, gambling casinos, and opium dens. Maybe not the opium dens. The illegal opium den is located in the basement of the quasi-legal casino, accessible via a secret door concealed by a red-eyed dragon.

It’s in the opium den that all the threads come together at last. Charles Lester, stockbroker, is an opium addict, but he’s not a murderer. Reggie Dyer is an opium smuggler and a crook, but he’s not a murderer either. It’s at this point that the story falls apart when Poirot fingers the real murderer of Wu Ling.

Poirot suspected Lord Pearson from the very beginning; Pearson claimed he had never seen Wu Ling but he also claimed that a Chinaman brought into the bank was not Wu Ling. How could he know? Okay, that makes sense. Poirot’s explanation about investment losses, impersonators, and stolen maps all made sense, as did framing Charles Lester. Lester was in the wrong place at the wrong time and as an opium addict, it was easy to pin blame on him.

But we never see a single scene where Poirot learns that Lord Pearson gambles regularly in the Red Dragon casino, losing heavily. Nor do we ever hear a single person tell Poirot that Lord Pearson invested heavily in the Imperial Trust collapse, losing his shareholders millions of dollars. How could Poirot know these things?

According to what we see on the screen, he can’t. I can see why Poirot made the accusation because it fits the facts that he does know. But we are never shown a single reason how Poirot could know the motivation behind the murder. It’s speculation; exactly what Poirot warned Hastings and Miss Lemon against. I wanted a scene or two; just a few minutes to show Poirot talking to distraught relatives, housekeepers, bank clerks, casino dealers, street prostitutes, anyone who knew what Lord Pearson got up to in his spare time.

It’s still a good episode, well worth watching. Despite the failure with the ending, the adaptation is far better than the short story it’s based on.