The raving lunatic

*SPOILERS*

I can agree with you on some of the points. Specifically Blore and Emily Brent. Those two committed acts that, while resulting in death, were committed unknowingly. They didn't plan on killing their victims, it just happened as a result of their actions. (Why he didn't punish Beatrice Taylor's parents instead of Miss Brent is a mystery. Maybe they showed regret and remorse whereas Miss Brent felt totally blameless) I can also agree on Marston.

The General, in the novel, admits that he sent Richmond on an unneccessary mission that Richmond would have needed a miracle to survive. Singling him out for a combat mission would have been forgiveable, but the fact that McArthur specifically came up with something unneccessary that he knew would be almost impossible for him to survive weighs against him in the poor stewards category. He sent him to die, and knew that he would.

A professional physician cannot operate while intoxicated. While I agree the death was an accident, Armstrong was playing with a loaded gun and it went off in the worst possible way. Finding someone to take his place, or feigning an illness would have saved his life, and the life of his patient, Clees.

The Rogers' definitely murdered their employer. If someone has a heart condition, has an attack, and you willfully don't give them the medicine they need to counteract it, you're a killer, pure and simple. It would be the equivalent of me watching a person drowning and standing on the dock holding a life preserver but not throwing it. Granted, I didn't hold the person's head under the water, but my deliberate action of not throwing the preserver caused a person's death. It's the same case with the Rogers' They aren't just poor stewards, they're murderers.

Vera sent a little boy out to drown. Again, she didn't physically drown him, but she turned her back on him to allow him to die. She knew that if he tried to swim out to far, he would die, and she let him do it anyway. If she'd let it happen by accident, I'd agree to her being a poor steward, but again, she let him swim out as far as he did for the sole purpose of letting him die. That's fairly diabolical. The novel takes this one step further and in a flashback, she reveals that she distracted the boy's mother to allow him to swim out, deciding that if the plan failed, and Cyril said that she told him he could, she'd deny it and be believed because Cyril was a compulsive liar anyway. In the film, it's just the two of them, and she lets things happen, instead of engineering them like in Christie's novel.

And with Lombard, when he left, he knew the men he was leaving behind, with no food, or ammo, would die. While flight probably kept him alive, he deliberately performed an action that resulted in deaths. Furthermore, he's almost boastful about it. We can speculate that Lombard feels guilt because of the nightmare he has in the film (Absent in the book) but that could have been brought on by fear of the situation he was in. Still, he's totally callous about it and carries no guilt whatsoever in his actions while awake. Ironically, Lombard is my favorite character in the story. He's got the skills to make it out alive, and one mistake with Vera costs him dearly.

While I agree that the Judge is something of a monster, one of the things that the novel does that they did not do in the movie is acquit him. (Or maybe they did. With the terrible subtitles, it's hard to tell what the judge truly says in the ending monologue) The judge, in his confession letter to the police, reveals that after the trial, evidence came out that proved Seaton was guilty. But he used the story as cover to make it appear that he was in the same boat, and because he knew at the time that most people thought he'd judged against Seaton maliciously. It was one of the clues he left for police to indicate that he was the killer, as he was the only member of the ten who was proven not to have committed a crime. But yes, the novel reveals that he's a bit of a sadist, killing pests with poision so he could watch them die. But he has a strong sense of law and order, so that prevented him from being a psychotic and he chose the legal profession instead.

While none of the characters committed a physical murder, the judge wasn't after that. He was after a group of 9 people that were guilty, but who the law could not touch. While I don't agree the judge should have taken the law into his own hands (It is revealed in the novel that he has a terminal illness, which is another reason he commits the crime. He's been fighting the urge to kill, even though he does not want an innocent to suffer, and so he hatches this plan to sate that urge and to live before he dies by his own hand. That is also not revealed in the film.)

It does make for an effective mystery film and while murder is murder, and none of the characters are deserving of death, they're not all just poor stewards either.

Still my favorite Christie, and favorite mystery in general. And the Russians gave us a fantastic film.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on it. Again, some of it is based on material in the book that wasn't included in the film, so it does make some of the characters in a gray area when it comes to their crimes, rather than over the line, like most in the book.


I love to love my Lisa.

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I think the judge is more concerned with applying the law as we know it nowadays. It doesn't make any difference if the other nine felt guilty or not -some admitted to their crime- but I think it's interesting that most of them did feel guilty, which suggests that they thought they had done something wrong that couldn't be chalked up to accident or opportunity; they had the intention to kill for their own purposes or because they lacked the humanity and the empathy to save someone else.

Marston was careless and selfish. What he did was perhaps not murder but it was doubtlessly a crime -any driver who is overspeeding is guilty at least of homicide.

The Rogers did murder the old lady, I think there's little doubt about that.

The doctor was negligent and he acted against the principles of his medical profession. Anyone knows that if you do surgery under the influence of any drug, you may kill that person. What he did was punishable, even if it was not murder; it was definitely a crime.

MacArthur singled out his wife's lover for combat with his mind set on having him killed so I think he did commit murder, even though perhaps it couldn't be called that, technically speaking. In a way, it's even worse than if he had killed him with his own hands, he adds cowardice to his action. He abused his position of superiority to have someone else killed. I think that qualifies as a crime.

I won't go into more detail but I think it's quite lenient to say that most of those people made opportunistic decisions and leave it at that. Many times in life, we act right or wrong not because of things we actively do or pursue but precisely because we are presented with the opportunity to act right or wrong. That's why our decisions are so important. One's guilt and responsibility is not diminished only because one makes the best of a situation where one finds him/herself instead of, say, shooting a gun.