Ilove traditional mysteries. There's a reason that detective novels used to be so short; they focused on the mystery at hand rather than the backgrounds of the characters. Nowadays, every detective has to be brooding and have a deep-rooted need for justice because of their dark pasts and/or a traumatic childhood event. Moviereview: “Murder on the Orient Express” By Gary Dowell | 2017-11-09T:00 November 9th, 2017 | Actor-director Kenneth Branagh’s workmanlike adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is diverting, crammed full of strong but unremarkable performances from an impressive ensemble cast, and mercifully short Murderon the Orient Express Movie: Check out Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express hollywood movie release date, cast & crew, trailer, songs, teaser, story, review, budget, first day Fast Money. The director and star Kenneth Branagh’s remake looks great but feels utterly Branagh in Murder on the Orient Express 20th Century FoxIn cinema, as elsewhere, there can be too much of a good thing. Quick Do you remember the film several years back that starred Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman, among others? If you recall that it was Nine, the director Rob Marshall’s musical follow-up to his Academy Award–winning Chicago, well good on you. I can scarcely summon any memory of the film ReadingThe director Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Murder on the Orient Express labors under the same delusion that cinematic quality is arithmetical Dench and Cruz are both here again, as are Branagh himself, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, and God knows how many others who are currently skipping my mind. If movies truly were math, this would be a they aren’t, and it’s not. Branagh’s retelling of the classic Agatha Christie tale is visually sumptuous yet otherwise inert, a series of what are essentially cameos by performers far too gifted to waste their time like this. There should be a law against casting Judi Dench in a film and then giving her virtually nothing to plot is familiar, even to those who have neither read the novel nor seen Sidney Lumet’s famous 1974 adaptation starring Albert Finney The year is 1935, and 13 apparent strangers are sharing a carriage on a train from Istanbul to Calais. One of them is murdered in his cabin with a dozen stab wounds, and the rest are trapped on the train by a snowdrift that has blocked the tracks. Who among them is the killer? Fortunately, among them is also Hercule Poirot Branagh, and he will solve the mystery because that is what he movie opens with an introductory scene in which Poirot is called upon to solve a mystery involving a priest, a rabbi, an imam—yes, the requisite “walk into a bar” joke is made—and the theft of a sacred relic. In the process, we are introduced to the idea of Hercule Poirot, inveterate perfectionist He carefully measures his two boiled eggs to ensure they are the same size; having stepped in a dung patty with one foot, he carefully places the other foot in it as well to preserve “balance” in the philosophical rather than ambulatory sense. Asked how it is he is able to deduce even the most hidden truths, he replies, “I can only see the world as it should be. And when it is not, imperfection stands out like the nose on a face.”The film is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel, and some of its variations are improvements. Two characters—a doctor and a soldier—are usefully melded into one, and a secondary stabbing is introduced to good effect. Other alterations, alas, seem more like concessions to the temper of the times a chase through the trestles of an alpine bridge; a fight and gunshot wound; a pointless backstory about Poirot’s lost love; and an extended bout of moral handwringing once the mystery has been the most dispiriting way in which the film diverges from its source material is in the person of Poirot himself. Christie’s Poirot was a somewhat comical figure, a short man five-foot-four, to be precise with a head “exactly the shape of an egg,” and a meticulously waxed mustache that curved up into two points. Branagh’s Poirot keeps the mustache—indeed, pushes it beyond absurdity, now curling up into six points—but otherwise he looks pretty much like movie-star Kenneth Branagh. He’s adopted the habit, a la Sherlock Holmes, of wowing strangers by intuiting their origins and professions on the basis of minute physical details. And, also like Holmes, he’s become adept at physical flatly heroic portrayal of Christie’s odd little Belgian detective might be less annoying if it didn’t smack of directorial vanity on Branagh’s part. So, too, might the fact that Branagh accords himself more screen time than all his illustrious costars combined. This latter defect would arguably be hard to avoid Finney, too, dominated the all-star cast of the 1974 version, even if Ingrid Bergman walked away with a thoroughly unearned Oscar for supporting actress. Is this unfair to Branagh? Perhaps. But it is the tightrope to be walked in self-directed star turns in movies that aim to be on the Orient Express is not a bad movie per se, merely one that feels self-indulgent and thoroughly unnecessary. Or perhaps it’s just me I can only see the movie as it should have been. And when it’s not, its imperfections stick out like the nose above a six-point mustache. MenuWatchlistENFully supportedEnglish United StatesPartially supportedFrançais CanadaFrançais FranceDeutsch Deutschlandहिंदी भारतItaliano ItaliaPortuguês BrasilEspañol EspañaEspañol MéxicoMurder on the Orient ExpressEditRoger Ebert [Susan Wloszczyna]ReelViews [James Berardinelli]New York Times [Glenn Kenny]The Village Voice [April Wolfe]Flick Filosopher [MaryAnn Johanson]100 Films in a Year [Richard Nelson]150Film [Emre Cogulu]Turkish411Celeb [Amir Siregar]411Celeb [Susan Granger]A Film a Day [Sonia Cerca]A Film Life [Ian Taylor, Sheila Taylor]A Potpourri of Vestiges [Murtaza Ali Khan]A Quarta Parede [Patrícia Miguez]PortugueseA Selenator's View [Daniel O'Connor]AARP [Anne Wakefield Hoyt]SpanishAcademia de Cinema [Fabio Ruiz]PortugueseAcción Cine [Jesús Usero]SpanishAdira Oktaroza [Adira Oktaroza]IndonesianAFK Sinemada [Ali F. 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Arrestingly sumptuous from the very first shot and filmed in glorious 65mm, this cozy new riff on Agatha Christie’s classic mystery is such an old-fashioned yarn that it could have been made back in 1934 if not for all the terrible CGI snow and a late-career, post-disgrace Johnny Depp performance that reeks of 21st century fatigue. Indeed, it’s hard to overstate just how refreshing it feels to see a snug, gilded piece of studio entertainment that doesn’t involve any spandex. Or, more accurately, how refreshing it would have felt had Branagh understood why Christie’s story has stood the test of time. You know the plot, even if you’ve forgotten the twist. The world is between wars, winter is settling in, and famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot Branagh is being summoned back to Britain for his next case. The fastest way there The Orient Express, one of those first class sleeper that America dumped in favor of Amtrak. A gilded mahogany serpent so refined that passengers are inspired to wear tuxedos to the dining car and directors are inspired to weave through the cabins in elegant tracking shots that bring us right on board, the Orient Express is an exclusive experience for a certain class of people. The paying customers on this particular trip naturally resemble a game of “Clue.” There’s a thirsty heiress Michelle Pfeiffer, a missionary Penélope Cruz, a plainclothes Nazi Willem Dafoe, a smattering of royalty that ranges in age from Judi Dench to “Sing Street” breakout Lucy Boynton, a governess Daisy Ridley, holding her own without a lightsaber in her hands, and the man she loves in secret “Hamilton” MVP Leslie Odom Jr., a movie star in the making. There’s also Depp’s crooked art dealer — the eventual corpse — and Josh Gad as his right-hand man; the cast is so deep that Derek Jacobi barely rates a mention. But one star forces the others into his orbit, and that is Branagh himself. Poirot has always been the engine for Christie’s mysteries, and not their fuel, but Branagh’s version doesn’t see things that way. In this script, penned by “Blade Runner 2049” screenwriter Michael Green, Poirot is always the top priority. From the stilted prologue in which the great detective is introduced with an undue degree of suspense, to the nauseating farewell that inevitably teases a Hercule Poirot Cinematic Universe, Branagh’s take on the character is lodged somewhere between a Shakespearian fool and a superhero. Filtered through a Pepé Le Pew accent that stinks from start to finish, he’s a walking spotlight in a film that feels like a Broadway revival, a live-action cartoon who’s more mustache than man. Branagh chews a dangerous amount of scenery for such a confined set, but the real problem is what the film has to do in order to justify his exaggerated presence It has to give Poirot an arc. Once the train derails on a rickety wooden bridge and Depp winds up dead in his cabin, the story should shift into mystery mode, with Poirot instigating our own imaginations. Here, however, Branagh blocks us out. What Christie learned from the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle is that geniuses are only believable if they’re actually geniuses — detective stories don’t work if they hinge on their protagonists sleuthing out something that a child could see for themselves. That’s true of the mysteries, and it’s true of their solutions. Poirot is supposed to be a genius, but here he’s an idiot savant. “There is right and there is wrong,” he declares early on, “and there is nothing in between.” “Murder on the Orient Express” You’d think, after solving however many cases, that he might have figured that out by now. But no, Poirot is obsessed with balance and restoring order to the world. The eggs he eats for breakfast have to be the same size. After accidentally stepping in horse poop with one shoe, he deliberately steps into it with the other. In a movie shot from so many dutch angles that the screen starts to seem tilted, Poirot is the only person who doesn’t recognize that the world isn’t flat, and that morality can never be perfectly measured. It’s agonizing to watch the brilliant detective work out such a simple concept, Branagh’s film growing long in the tooth even though it’s selling itself short. “Murder on the Orient Express” is a creaky whodunnit in this day and age, and there’s not much that Branagh can or chooses to do about that without disrespecting the source material. His well-meaning but half-assed reach for relevance involves a certain degree of wokeness, this version highlighting the pluralism of Christie’s original in its backhanded celebration of American diversity, its conclusion that any true melting pot is sustained by fostering a mutual desire for justice. Race comes to the fore, with Odom inhabiting a role that was once played by Sean Connery. Interesting things percolate under the surface, as all of the passengers are traveling with a lot of baggage. But the movie only cares about the suspects for as long as they’re sharing the screen with Poirot. Even Pfeiffer’s big moment is relegated to the end credits, where she can be heard singing a love ballad called “Never Forget.” Like everything else here, it’s hard to remember. A handsomely furnished holiday movie that should have devoted more attention to its many ornaments and less to the tinsel at the top, this “Murder on the Orient Express” loses steam as soon as it leaves the station. Grade C “Murder on the Orient Express” opens in theaters on Friday, November 10. Sign Up Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

murder on the orient express 2017 movie review