Murder! (On the Orient Express) Movie Review

The problem with a mystery is that once the mystery is solved the surprise of the reveal disappears. It’s one of the reasons why I can’t watch Gone Girl again; once everything is unveiled for better or for worse it feels very deflated and it’s a movie you tell your friends just see it once just to see how messed up it is. There are very few ways to bring an audience into watching a film: one) either by cinematography or special effects for lovers of cinema or for film studies but that won’t bring in a lot of numbers or two) the actors performances. In the remake of Murder on the Orient Express, the movie strives to do both things but with the later falling just short.

            Fair disclosure, I have not read nor watched another adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery novel (the only one I’ve seen is Ten Little Indians). As of writing, I don’t know how different the movie’s plot deviates from the original work or if it follows closely to the novel. So let’s go through the PROS, OKAY, CONS, and the WTF???!!!???

            PROS: The cinematography shows the constriction of being stuck on a train and it’s done very well. In one shot, the camera pans outside the train in the station as the main character is traversing through the narrow corridor to his cabin. It also uses overhead angles and panning through the train cars to further build on the realism. In a recently released behind the scenes video, the train set was build to scale and a projector and screen was positioned outside of the scale model cabin to give the actors something to look at rather than a CGI greenscreen. Most of the visuals are very vibrate, capturing the elegance of riding the Orient Express which was one of the heights of first class travel before the airline industry took over. As far as acting goes, I thought the main protagonist (Hercule Poirot) was the best but only because he has the experience to diversify his role and not be a caricature like the rest of the cast (more on that later). He also was the director so props to him for juggling roles.

OKAY: The movie has enough twists and turns to keep things interested but the plot unravels a bit too soon before the climax of the film. All the other actors felt like they were caricatures of characters they have already played: Daisy Ridley (Mary Debenham) I still see as Rey from Star Wars, Josh Gad (Hector MacQueen) is a smarter LeFou, and Michelle Pfeiffer (Caroline Hubbard) was just Michelle Pfeiffer. It was nice to see Johnny Depp (Samuel Ratchett) not wearing gratuitous amounts of makeup but again, his character felt like someone he had already played before. William Defoe’s character (Gerhard Hardman) is interesting but it never quite gets there. Same thing goes for Penelope Cruz (Pilar Estravados); she’s reaching but it’s just not enough. You have all this Oscar winning or heavy hitter names but none of them are bring in their A game (except for the detective).

CONS: For the love of me, I can’t remember anyone’s names. There just so many cast members and so many of them are again seemed to be playing a role they’ve already played before I can only really refer to them as their real name. I don’t even remember the full name of the main protagonist except his name is Hercules (Hercule Poirot). The only name I do remember is Johnny Depp’s character but that’s only because they say it more than twenty times throughout the film.

WTF???!!!???: Nothing too crazy or bonkers happened in this movie. Sorry to disappoint you.

Should I watch it: The film is more interesting if you’ve never read or saw the previous adaptations of Orient Express. It worthing going for a discount day or Regel’s $6 Tuesday but otherwise it might be better to wait for a DVD release.

Sequelbility: The movie hints that the main protagonist will return and as he is a main character in several of Agatha Christie’s works it’s likely another novel in the process of being adapted. The film was produced on a neat budget of 55 million, a fraction of what usual blockbusters cost. It has already made back 87-89 million at the worldwide box office which is not bad considering it went up against Thor: Ragnarok’s second week in release, but it will be interesting to see if both movie can hold on with Justice League coming out later this week. Kenneth Branagh wants to do more if this movie is successful.