Review of Murder on the Orient Express (2017) by Ittiaces — 10 Nov 2017

Admittedly I enjoyed this movie a little less than expected. It looks beautiful, has an A-list cast and of course is adapted from a book by legendary crime writer Agatha Christie. I took a Christie expert to the theatre with me, who has over the years read everything that bears her name. When Kenneth Branagh appeared on screen for the first time, she turned to me and said: "No, Nooo, Noooooo". So if you're a hardcore Hercule Poirot fan, then you may find this hard to watch as Brannagh does not embody that character as faithfully as he is written. If you don't care about that whatsoever then, good news, you'll probably enjoy this incarnation a lot more. There are a lot of very well known actors in this that share screen time with each other and don't take up a lot of individual attention. Daisy Ridley and Michelle Pfeiffer do seem to get more time. Pfeifer is electric; I wish she'd do more movies. Of course, there were no weak performances as you would expect from a group of this calibre. Johnny Depp as much as I love him does ham it up terribly, this seems to be an ongoing feature of all his work these days, but his character is engaging.

Overall the pace does seem stilted, and it drags on a little too long for me. Being shot entirely in a studio, all of the environments outside the train were CG, even though they proved stunning. A couple of the backdrops, although pretty, did not look photoreal which you'd expect from a feature like this. The ending set the franchise up for a sequel, Death on the Nile, another Christie book so if you enjoyed this one then there's another to look forward to. It's a decent movie, and the all-star cast provides a novelty that you won't get in any films these days. Worth a look.