text: Donald Sutherland, an American paleontologist visiting England, picks up a hitch hiker one evening. Two years later, having discovered the man's address book in his car, he returns the book to the man's opulent home, only to find that the man's been hanged for murder. Nobody in or out of the family seems to care that the hitch hiker could not have committed the murder (of his own stepmother) because he was in Sutherland's car at the time of the crime.<br /><br />Sutherland is the man's alibi but he's turned up too late. Out of a sense of guilt, he tracks down the real murderer.<br /><br />Agatha Christie's mysteries usually involve a number of diverse people, all of them with one or another motive for the crime, all of them suspect, and a puzzle that depends on the construction of a strict time line. There is often, not always, a sidekick with whom the investigator can talk things over.<br /><br />Because of the anfractuosity of the situation, due care must be taken to explain each element of the mystery to the reader or viewer. Redundancy is perfectly okay. We have to keep the characters and the time lines straight. Christie's movies are of the rare kind in which the use of famous faces in subordinate characters is actually useful. (Jacqueline de Bellefort? Oh, yes, that's Mia Farrow.) But this version of "Ordeal by Innocence" is a Golan-Globus production, with all that implies in the way of production values, a thoughtfully prepared script, and skill behind the camera.<br /><br />The first few minutes, in which Sutherland discovers that an innocent man has been hanged, are fine. After that, everything is flung at the viewer in disjointed scraps, often in sudden flashbacks or in confusing voiceovers that tell us nothing. The script has a slapdash quality, as if thrown together by two hacks overnight. Few of the faces are familiar and that doesn't help at all. Everyone drops remarks about everyone else and the names become a hopeless jumble. The musical score consists of four instruments doing irritating atonal jazz riffs. Some nudity is thrown in to wake up the dozers in the audience. If Dame Agatha were alive, she'd be among the viewers who needed to be shaken awake.<br /><br />Dullsville.