Murder on the Orient Express ** (2017, Kenneth Branagh, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Michelle Pfeiffer, Josh Gad, Johnny Depp, Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe) – Movie Review

Director Kenneth Branagh’s remake of the famous Agatha Christie murder mystery thriller Murder on the Orient Express is mostly stodgy, creaky and clunky, and finally unsatisfying, though his starry support cast are mostly welcome and it looks good in a lavish production.

Branagh straps on a ‘Allo ‘Allo!-style phony French accent and phony facial hair as the bizarrely over-clever Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, but neither he nor his film are much fun at all, unlike the Peter Ustinov movies or the David Suchet TV shows. To be fair, Branagh does take it all properly seriously, but maybe too seriously. He is probably better than Albert Finney in the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, but my feeling is that his film isn’t.

The attempts in the screenplay by Michael Green to give it some tragic depth and in Branagh’s film-making to give it some style ironically just make it seem ponderous and out of date.

With a prelude in Istanbul, with Poirot quickly solving a case and catching the guilty party, and a lumpy ending, with Poirot suffering agonies of conscience, then just being set up for a trip to Egypt for a sequel, there is way too much of Branagh in the movie. This frankly leaves precious little screen time for anyone else, apart perhaps from Michelle Pfeiffer, who has enough to do as Caroline Hubbard, and Josh Gad too as Hector MacQueen. Pfeiffer, inheriting the role from Angelina Jolie, is a definite asset to the movie.

Poor Judi Dench is given virtually nothing to do at all as Princess Dragomiroff, and that’s not good. Willem Dafoe, so brilliant in The Florida Project, is just okay here as the mysterious Gerhard Hardman. Daisy Ridley is brisk and in properly in Thirties period, both for looks and voice, as Miss Mary Debenham, but she isn’t memorable in any way. Penélope Cruz is miscast and not a success as the mousy and downtrodden Pilar Estravados.

Johnny Depp as another mysterious character, Edward Ratchett.

There are too many talky sequences in the movie, which stalls the dynamism. For example there is a long scene between Johnny Depp as another mysterious character, Edward Ratchett, and Poirot, whose protection he seeks to hire. It seems to last way too long, this scene, but then it’s practically Depp’s only scene in the movie, so it kind of has to.

Daisy Ridley is brisk as Miss Mary Debenham.

One of the film’s biggest problems must be that, with three previous film versions of the novel, not to mention the hugely popular book itself, most folks will know whodunit. And the film can’t seem to get round the idea that this is all it has to offer. So if you know whodunit, there is no suspense, and you might not need to board the train.

Jim Clay’s production designs and Andrew Ackland-Snow’s art direction are excellent, though there’s a bit too much obvious CGI, and it is variable, with some of it not great. Patrick Doyle’s score seems a bit slack and obvious, And what is that terrible song over the end credits?

Agatha Christie (1890–1976).

Christie’s story was inspired partly by an incident in 1929 when the Orient Express was trapped in a blizzard in Çerkezköy, Turkey, and also by the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping case. In 1931, Christie herself got stuck on the train when heavy rainfall and flooding washed part of the track away.

Murder on the Orient Express opened on 3 November 2017. Along with Kenneth Branagh, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Pena, Lucy Boynton, Tom Bateman, Derek Jacobi, Penélope Cruz, Olivia Colman, Tom Bateman, Josh Gad, Willem Dafoe, Sergei Polunin and Leslie Odom Jr are all on board the 2017 death train.

A follow-up, a remake of Death on the Nile, is in the works, with Michael Green again penning the script, and Branagh is returning as director and to reprise his role as Poirot. It releases on 8 November 2019 on the same day as the next Star Wars installment.

That was the plan but, after several delays because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Death on the Nile was finally released in some countries on 9 February 2022, and in the UK and US on 11 February 2022.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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