What could have been a dull and very French lecture in modern linguistics becomes a high-stakes whodunit where the usual suspects are not your typical movie culprits.

Watching a bad film, like reading a bad book, is dispiriting. The temptation when it comes to a film such as The Translators is to ignore it. However, I think the smugness of these films needs to be challenged.

The Translators spins a mysterious web of literary secrets, suspicions, and schemes in a deliciously twisty plot with plenty of clever surprises and thrills.

While it may not be especially plausible, it is a twist-filled mystery about a group of translators tasked with rendering the final volume of a best-selling French trilogy into their native languages, and it's delicious fun.