'Murder on the Orient Express': The Cast is the Thing

You won’t have a bad time seeing Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express.” Indeed, it is a festive throwback to those British movies of sweeping landscapes; eccentric characters; privilege, leisure and luxury; maids and valets. And its main character, the self-proclaimed greatest detective in the world, Hercule Poirot, was Christie’s most famous creation.
 
But the question is why Kenneth Branagh needed to make the film. It’s not as if there wasn’t a famously successful Sidney Lumet film version in 1974 starring Albert Finney, or strange and unsatisfactory TV efforts in 1991 and 2001. 
 
Perhaps he liked the idea of assembling an all-star cast and bringing his usual visual swagger and devotion to 65mm film, which allows grand scale and rich color and reminds of films about the days of the British Raj, to a period piece. Or maybe he couldn’t resist playing Poirot. 
 
After all, he directed himself in “Henry V” and “Hamlet,” so why not again? Because for me, and I suspect many readers who have seen the BBC Poirot TV series broadcast on PBS, David Suchet is Poirot, with his mincingly odd duck walk, perfect mustaches, uncreased clothes for every occasion and all weathers, complete with hats, furled umbrella and spats. And an accent to match.
 
Finney was good, Branagh’s effort falls short: too burly, oddly accented, more dramatic than cerebral (Poirot should be all about “the little gray cells.”)
 
But how many movies are made for adults — you realize that in Hollywood that means over 35 — anymore? How many are profanity-free, safe for families? We don’t even see the murder, only the discovery of the body, and in one of Branagh’s bizarre directorial decisions it is filmed from overhead, a Quentin Tarantino touch that seems mannered here.
 
Happily, the screenplay by “Blade Runner 2049’s” Michael Green — what a multi-talented guy he must be — doesn’t try to reinvent or improve on Christie, though there are updatings here and there. 
 
The ending is different from Lumet’s — you will wonder how such a large trestle table was on board the train all the time — but it works. The actor’s actors cast includes Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Olivia Colman, Willem Dafoe, Penelope Cruz, Daisy Ridley, a dazzling Michelle Pfeiffer and a sleazy, crooked Johnny Depp, who for once doesn’t overact, and many more.
 
 
 
“Murder on the Orient Express” is playing widely. It is rated PG-13.

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HVRHS Today - June 2025

HVRHS Today - June 2025

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