Steam & Suspicion

Critic Reviews

In an era brimming with rehashed plots and recycled tropes, 'Steam & Suspicion' chugs into the station with a boiler full of promise but delivers only a modest puff of novelty. The ambition is as grand as the mechanized London skyline it portrays, yet the film struggles to keep its narrative pistons firing. Walken's portrayal of Inspector 'Cog' Gearsmith feels like a rusty automaton amid a whirlwind of tropes so well-worn they could belong in a museum of cinematic curiosities, while Downeyr Juniper-berry's Piper Rivetbolt is the spoonful of sugar in this over-steeped cup of British tea, offering zest but little substance. Gourdnicholson's Agent Brass feels inserted as an afterthought—a token twist in an otherwise predictable gearbox. Director Cuarowl, known for his ability to weave visual gold, seems to have dipped his lens in a vat of coal dust this time around, obscuring what could have been a shining contribution to the steampunk genre. While the comedy ticks occasionally, the humor is as fleeting as steam from a kettle, leaving audiences in a fog of suspended chuckles that never quite build to laughter. Our gears of expectation were wound too tightly for a film that ultimately fails to escape the shadow of its own ambitions, clanking its way to a conclusion that, like a misfiring engine, one can't help but wish functioned as elegantly as its aesthetic.