Review of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) by Tomas T — 06 Oct 2012

Sidney Lumet depiction of Agatha Christie's novel Murder on the Orient Express immerses viewer in intriguing murder mystery with the legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

First and foremost the story of the Murder on the Orient Express is absolutely fantastic and proves unquestionably why Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. A murder taking place on a long train ride from Constantinopol with a group of seemingly unrelated passengers offers the perfect mystery for our beloved investigator Hercule Poirot to solve.

The director Sidney Lumet deserves recognition for successfully capturing the atmosphere and mystery aspects of the novel so well and transforming the complex story into film format successfully. But despite nice directing and technically sound production, the low score is due to the fact that I have grown up watching Hercule Poirot being portrayed by David Suchet in the TV series and consider him to be the one and only true Hercule Poirot. Thus Albert Finney's impersonation of Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express as yelling and frantic investigator just did not feel right and had an adverse impact on my judgement for the tittle.