The basics are in the title, of course. The ensemble board the Orient Express. There’s a murder. Poirot has to solve the case. As much as the film tries things around that core, the mystery stays at the heart of things. Although I did get the sense that Branagh expected half the film to already know whodunnit, and the clues laid for those that don’t are fairly straightforward to follow. It’s not quite whocareswhodunnit, just that’s not where the best bits of the film are. What it does do, though, is have enormous fun with it. Branagh has cast his movie wisely, with a company of actors who can do a lot with not very much. They duly oblige, and a lot of the fun is seeing them bustle around as the plot thickens. Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green seem to have a determination – and an admirable one – to keep the running time south of two hours, and in doing so, you do get stretches of not always easy to hear exposition-fuelled dialogue. What I’ve always loved about Branagh’s directorial style though is how kinetic it is. The sense of a man moving around his stage with real energy, soaking up surroundings and encouraging us to explore the worlds he puts on screen (I think Much Ado About Nothing is the peak of how well that’s worked for him). Here, he employs a similar style to good effect. There are moments, such as the shots of the Orient Express snaking through the snow-covered landscapes, that seem a little too digital (I half expected Tom Hanks from The Polar Express to pop off the train at one point). But mostly, Branagh does bring a cinematic edge to material that easily could have been more stage-y.
title: “Murder On The Orient Express Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-08” author: “Anne Stone”
It’s 1934, and we meet Poirot in Palestine, where he solves a local crime and decides it’s time for a holiday. But his plans are curtailed by an urgent request to come back to London and continue work on another case, which requires him to book passage on the Orient Express with the help of the rail company’s director Bouc (Tom Bateman), who boards along with Poirot. Joining them are a dozen other passengers of varying ages, nationalities and temperaments, with Poirot immediately finding a shady, gangster-like character named Edward Ratchett (Johnny Depp) suspicious and disagreeable. Fans of the book will remember how all this turns out, and frankly non-readers may eventually figure it out too (this writer never read the novel or saw the 1974 film, but deduced the solution). Yet even though Christie’s original puzzle and resolution may seem dated and even more implausible now than some critics suggested 83 years ago when the novel was first published, there is something captivating and engrossing about watching Poirot carefully and patiently go about his business, which consists largely of listening and watching. It helps that Branagh is outstanding in the role: eccentric, dryly funny and arrogant, yet brimming with a keen, unquestionable intelligence and righteous sense of justice, his Poirot is effortlessly watchable (and wears a moustache for the ages). Michael Green’s screenplay keeps Poirot front and center and also expands upon the moral dilemma that the great sleuth ultimately faces as the answer to the mystery becomes inescapably clear to him: haunted by that previous case and exhausted by his own unceasing workload, this Poirot finds his own definition of justice put to the test on the Orient Express, and the experience changes him. That’s certainly a wrinkle we don’t often see in films starring a recurring hero (and we suspect that the studio, 20th Century Fox, would love to make more Poirot movies if this one is a hit), but the decision that Poirot faces adds an extra level of gravitas to the character. Branagh also has trouble making anything exciting out of the handful of duty-bound action scenes inserted into the narrative, and the second half of the movie begins to labor and creak as the investigation becomes repetitive and the many little twists and reveals start to crash murkily into one another. But there’s always a witty line of dialogue, a singular moment or a gorgeously widescreen shot (courtesy of cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos) to liven things up, while the production design by Jim Clay ensures that there are plenty of lovely period details to fill up the frame. So yes, Murder on the Orient Express recalls a somewhat older style of filmmaking, with both the delights and deficits endemic to a particular era (or eras) of period melodrama. What works about it works very well, and the biggest mystery now is whether audiences in 2017 will find themselves drawn into the story — like Poirot himself — or don’t want to bother to solve it at all.
