Review of Murder on the Orient Express (2017) by Thequietgamer — 03 May 2018

A parade of stars and beautifully directed. Kenneth Branagh brings murder-mystery back to the screens. I just wish he could have done so with a more interesting pace. Things can be a slow drag. Especially at the beginning. I also felt I never spent enough time with everybody on the Orient Express. Some potential suspects get hardly any screen-time. Mix that in with how poorly developed everyone is and it never feels like you're given all the pieces Poirot is seeing. A really good film of this nature would allow you to play detective right alongside the protagonist. Unfortunately it feels like there are too many faces and not enough running time to interrogate them all.

Despite this I enjoyed my time with the film. It's got a great sense of humor, decent payoff, and a wonderfully quirky detective. I wanted to learn more about Poirot and his backstory. This movie didn't teach me too much about him so I hope the character returns to the screen in the future with a sequel or prequel. It's also just so novel to see a movie like this these days. A shame as they used to be so much more frequent. Did I mention it's very pretty as well? Then there's the number of big names in the ensemble cast to gawk over (Michelle Pfeiffer has still got it).