Murder on the Orient Express
All aboard for the retelling of a classic Agatha Christie piece from the 1930s.
Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot
What a wasted opportunity. Here we have a dame, a couple of knights of the realm, a pair of Oscar winners and an additional four Oscar nominees all crammed onto the opulent locomotive at the heart of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit. Then the whole boiling lot of them is sent rocking across the snowy and spectacular terrain of Eastern Europe. Shortly afterwards a savage murder is committed on board. In such illustrious company, who could be so barbaric as to stab a fellow passenger not just once but innumerable times? And will they kill again?
With a set-up so ludicrously contrived, one might at least have had some fun with it. As it is, the director, producer and star Kenneth Branagh alone hogs the limelight as the scrupulous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, mumbling all the best lines into his ridiculous moustache. Had Hitchcock taken the reins, he would have injected both comedy and suspense, but Branagh takes a more melancholy stance. In addition, the mouth-wateringly cinematic potential of the subject is swept aside with some CGI and the odd gratuitous (and decidedly odd) camera move. And the editing, courtesy of Mick Audsley, is a slapdash affair.
At his worst, Kenneth Branagh is a director who draws attention to his own meretricious flourishes – and to his thespian grandstanding – and here he indulges both vices. But his greatest crime of all is to corral such a glittering cast and to expend it on so lifeless and humdrum a confection.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Tom Bateman, Olivia Colman, Sergei Polunin, Lucy Boynton, Marwan Kenzari, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Gerard Horan, Adam Garcia, Richard Clifford.
Dir Kenneth Branagh, Pro Kenneth Branagh, Mark Gordon, Judy Hofflund and Ridley Scott, Screenplay Michael Green, from the novel by Agatha Christie, Ph Haris Zambarloukos, Pro Des Jim Clay, Ed Mick Audsley, Music Patrick Doyle, Costumes Alexandra Byrne.
Twentieth Century Fox/Genie films/Kinberg Genre/The Mark Gordon Company/Scott Free Productions-20th Century Fox.
114 mins. UK/Malta/USA/France/Canada/New Zealand. 2017. Rel: 3 November 2017. Cert. 12A.
