Review of Murder on the Orient Express (2017) by Charlie P — 29 Mar 2018

When a trip throughout Europe on the Orient Express train turns into a nightmare when Samuel Ratchett (Johnny Depp), a former gangster is brutally murdered, it's up to Detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) to investigate the Express's passengers in order to solve the mystery. However, as he finds out more about Rachett's connections with some of the suspects, he finds out that this case is not as simple as he expected..

For almost a whole century, aside from also writing the longest running West End play, The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie's novels revolving around the adventures of Detective Hercule Poirot, have become some of the most popular crime novels ever published, being translated into 103 languages, has been read by over 2 billion people worldwide and of course, have been adapted numerous times on films and TV shows such as Death on the Nile, The Alphabet Murders, Black Coffee and that's not even mentioning radio shows, plays and even anime that have all featured him solving cases.

Given his background in directing some of the best adaptions of William Shakespeare's plays in the 90's, Sir Kenneth Branagh, who also served as producer and plays Poirot himself, was an ideal choice to adapt one of Hercule's most iconic adventures, 1934's Murder on the Orient Express which has been adapted several times before as a 1974 British Film starring Albert Finney, a 2001 TV film and even an episode on the 2010 ITV show, Agatha Christie's Poirot.

Branagh's talent in making his directing style and cinematography look as large and cinematic as possible helps in giving this adaptation a greater sense of scope and emotion over the previous versions, which is helped by the all-star supporting cast consisting of the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Michelle Pfeiffer giving their characters interesting and memorable personalities and back-stories and although this message is present throughout the other adaptations, Micheal Green's screenplay goes much deeper into the moral consequences of the delivery of justice, even with good intentions which, as mentioned before, helps makes this adaptation stand out from the others.

Although the role of Poroit himself has been played by numerous big names over the years, with the aforementioned Albert Finney, Tony Randall, Peter Unistov, Ian Holm and Alfred Molina all leaving their mark on this character, Kenneth Branagh gives the right balance of intelligence and eccentricity to this role, while also giving the character some surprising emotional depth, despite his ridiculous moustache design.

Overall, Murder on the Orient Express is a mostly entertaining nostalgic thriller to anyone who loves either Agatha Christie or detective fiction in general. Given the amount of adapatations of her work however, it's hard to say whether or not this film will find it's place among all those other films. But as it is, it's still worth a full investigation.....