Murder on the Orient Express (Film)

‘to a man with a hammer every job is a nail’ - Mary Debenham

I’m beginning to like Poirot now, at least Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of him. The 2017 remake of Agatha Christie’s classic sees Poriot using his ‘little grey cells’ to solve a murder on the Orient Express, where everyone in the train is a suspect.

At the start of the film, I began to warm up to Poirot as he made jokes, was slightly OCD and had quite a comical moustache but it did begin to irritate me as time went on. Still his lack of modesty and his facts seemingly coming out of nowhere are two things that still haven’t changed and that I can’t over look about his character but as this is the same for me when reading Christie’s other classic ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, so the film does appear to somewhat stay true to the original.

There were also other Christie like things in the film such as how the murder is initially shown, the closed circle of Cluedo like suspects and how Poriot takes control at the end, much to my dissatisfaction.

 As someone who hasn’t read the book each revelation was surprising but unbeliveable. I found the motive for murder to be too complex and coincidental to be plausible as I felt the need to pause the film and jot down each connection to make sense of it, which caused me to gradually become less engaged with the film as it came to an end. Also once again I’m not satisfied with how Poriot discovers his facts because I feel that he uses intuition more so than evidence. Although I think the film does well to present something that appears like a clear attempt at Christie, it does what many films based on something or remakes do too often nowadays which is originality. Though you can make the argument that most people wouldn’t be happy with sort of change to the storyline but for me an attempt would’ve been appreciated.

It’s clear that 20^th Century Fox wanted this film to be a blockbuster due to its well known cast but only to attract attention to the film rather than due to acting. For one, Johnny Depp who is known for his ability to transform himself into anyone role he takes on including Edward Scissorhands, is dress plainly in this film and his character doesn’t leave any impression on me, much like that of Penelope Cruz’s who I’m still not sure was necessary. A lot of money also seemed to be quite clearly dedicated to cinematography as many wonderful shots are used like aerial view but there was a lot of unnecessary back and forth when a tracking shot was used to follow Josh Gad’s character Hector MacQueen.

Overall, although the film had my attention at the start it gradually declines during the investigation when every characters unconvincing secret is revealed, though I’m not surprised because I believe the book will always be better than the film.