This film was great, very happy with how it turned out. I wouldn't change anything other than Poirot's vocal levels at times and I enjoyed all of the acting.
Very impressive film.
Murder on the Orient Express is a remake of the 1974 classic, both based on the writings of Agatha Christie. Lucky for me, I had never seen or read the earlier rendition of this film, so my review will be based on such, making it, I feel, more authentic. Rather than sitting here and telling you that this movie did not need to happen; telling you that the other was better; telling you stick to reading the novels by Agatha Christie; I am going to analyze this movie for you as if the others don’t exist. With that said, let’s begin.
Hercule Poirot, not to be confused with the Roman god, is a world-renown detective. Everyone knows who he is, everyone needs his help with the biggest cases in the world and he really just wants a break. Unfortunately, a break he shall never have. The movie begins with the solving of a case, where he is set up as a genius. As soon as he thinks he’s got a bit of a vacation ahead of him, he is asked aboard the Orient Express to go to yet another mystery that needs solved. Little does the super-sleuth know, his luxurious rest aboard the Orient Express in between cases, really will be not-so relaxing. On board with an ex-gangster, Ratchett, who is in the midst of fearing for his life amongst hate letters; Ratchett’s persona l secretary and valet; and a cast of seemingly complete random strangers; someone is about to die and the murderer? On the train.
This movie did a great job of developing characters. Unlike most other movie concepts, this isn’t necessarily one where you can fully develop each character’s backstory in the first act. As the movie goes on, each passenger is interrogated to some degree, other passengers shed light on their co-passengers and Poirot uncovers truth in each rider’s lies. So while the movie followed three-act plot structure, there was simply less to be done in the first act based on the premise of the movie. If the movie simply fully detailed each character at the beginning of the film, the resolve would have been clear from the start. I was very impressed with the way they chose to develop the plot and characters.
The only negative I had for the film was that there were several times throughout the film where it was fairly difficult to understand Poirot. I understand that the accent was necessary to the movie, however, for a character who was rather quiet at times, I wish there would have been more focus on making his words a little louder and clearer at different points. This is a very small hack at an otherwise brilliant performance by Kenneth Branagh (Poirot), but the truth, nonetheless.
Ultimately, I very much enjoyed the film. Until the resolve was described by Poirot, I was in the dark. This doesn’t often happen to me, but this film was incredibly well written, I had many mistakes in my few guesses as the movie went along. Any movie that can keep me off the trail of the ending until it is revealed to the entire audience gains my respect and I very much enjoyed playing couch detective as Poirot uncovered the mystery.
