Leofwine_draca Review of Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Everything wrong with Hollywood

[4/10 · 3 January 2021]

An uninteresting new version of the classic Agatha Christie murder mystery, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS screams everything that's wrong with modern Hollywood. It's been shot on a fake-looking green screen of snowbound vistas, and from the moment it randomly adds martial arts into the story early on I knew it wouldn't be much good. An impressive all-star cast is assembled only for the actors to be wasted in paper-thin roles, while Kenneth Branagh's Poirot gets all of the screen time and attention. He's surprisingly average in the role, easily exceeded by the earlier stars who played the character; Ustinov, for example, but in particular the definitive Suchet. The film adds humour and quirk to the tale but just begins dragging after a while, leading to a shrill and hysterical climax.