Andrew Wyke, a wealthy mystery writer, invites his wife’s lover to his country house — and proposes a game that turns deadly serious.
In Sleuth (1972), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Laurence Olivier plays Andrew Wyke, a successful author of detective novels who lives in a house full of games, puzzles and automata. He invites Milo Tindle, played by Michael Caine, a hairdresser who is having an affair with Wyke’s wife, to discuss a divorce — and then suggests that Milo steal his wife’s jewellery, in a plot that is itself a kind of game.
Olivier plays Wyke with a theatrical delight, a man who treats life as a puzzle to be solved and people as pieces to be moved. His scenes with Caine, the film’s only two actors, are a duel of wit, in which each man tries to outwit the other, and the film’s twists keep the audience guessing to the end.
Sleuth is a clever, claustrophobic thriller, and Olivier’s Wyke is its centre: a writer who cannot stop inventing plots, even when the plot turns against him.