Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Screenplay by Michael Green

Based on the book by Agatha Christie

Starring Kenneth Branagh, Penelope Cruz, Josh Gad, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench

Considering how bad the trailer was for Murder on the Orient Express, I actually did enjoy it more than expected. Looking at it again the first 50 or so seconds is intriguing, especially when it cuts to a scream alongside the screeching of the train after Johnny Depp smirks at Michelle Pfeiffer. But then the awful decision was made to play the song Believer for the rest of it (wtf?). An Imagine Dragons song used to market a 1930s Agatha Christie adaptation, how do these people keep their jobs. And then seeing Kenneth Branagh show up at the tail end with his cartoonish mustache saying “My name is Hercule Poirot, and I am probably the greatest detective in the world”. Oh the cringe. It was at that point I thought, Yeah, this is probably going to suck.

But, shockingly, Branagh’s portrayal of Christie’s detective is great. I say shocking not to deride Branagh (who also did direct the film, and has starred and directed many others) but to point out just how goofy the marketing made this whole movie look. Branagh has been around for a while, and has made a ton of adaptations of Shakespeare. He was, I think, a good choice to adapt something by Agatha Christie. His roots in theater make him a good actor’s director, and starring and directing a film is already a tall order, the weight of each alone enough to tear someone apart, so I forgive him for some of his lackluster blocking and camera placement. And he was also fucking awesome in Dunkirk.

That’s not to say the film isn’t well made, it is. The camera work can be standard at times, but mostly it does its best at not distracting us from the all star cast present. You trade off cinematic brilliance for ensemble casts sometimes. Mainstream films from Hollywood generally forbid obscuring a well known actor’s face while they speak, so you know going into a movie like this where there are many familiar faces that you’re going to get a lot of shot reverse shots and tighter wides to show everyone’s identity. Man does that shit make you appreciate Gordon Willis’ lighting and camera movement in The Godfather all that much more. Such things are taken for granted and show why so many movies feel exactly the same. Interestingly enough, Murder on the Orient Express does pay a couple homages to The Godfather. A certain character erupts into violence when we first see him because a photographer has taken his picture. You’ll remember how Sonny was first introduced at the beginning of The Godfather, as he breaks the camera of the photographer trying to get shots at his sister’s wedding. Except that’s a genius intro there and in Murder the character I speak of does a spinning drop kick on the picture taker. No I did not make that up. Probably the biggest laugh I had the whole time, and we got The Fifty Shades Free trailer before the movie started.

The other big callback to The Godfather is in that Branagh slowly moves the camera forward on a character during a reveal. This seems like a basic staple of all filmmaking, but to me it is most famous in The Godfather when the camera starts up high at the corner of the room and slowly descends down on Michael Corleone as he talks about his plans for the family, and it is in that careful, patient stretch of time that we realize that is the moment he has changed forever. It is probably my favorite shot in all of movies for that reason. That kind of precise timing where character arcs, story reveals, and epic moments are synced so perfectly with the camera, the score, the actor’s performance are reserved only for the best of cinema. It is rare to see a movie pull it off. but I keep returning to the theater to find the ones that do. You do see that specific shot in many other films as well. It’s used in Jaws when we first meet Quint, after he scratches his nails on the chalkboard to get everyone’s attention. You see it in older films like Sansho the Bailiff. Indeed, even in Breaking Bad Bryan Cranston uses this exact motion in one of the episodes he directs right after Hank discovers Walter is Heisenberg. I instantly recognized the tribute while watching the show, and later on I would read an interview with Cranston where he remarks how The Godfather is his favorite movie, thus solidifying what I already knew. I find these sort of things interesting, and I dunno, I guess I’ve usually been able to notice them when I see stuff. That’s why I’m constantly saying, oh this shot is from this, this line is a reference to that, etc. But yeah, that slow camera push forward is used quite often in Murder. Branagh has it done on Josh Gad in a certain reveal of his true character. He uses it in an overhead shot on the murder scene as well, as he discovers (quite quickly) all the clues of the incident.

But oh man have I derailed (ha get it, like a train? kill me). Back to Branagh’s direction. Like Robert Altman he is pretty capable of handling multiple A list actors in one scene. Murder on the Orient Express does even have some Gosford Park vibes, but that’s probably because Altman modeled that story in Agatha Christie’s style. But I fucking hated Gosford Park and was bored to painful tears by it. Murder mostly kept me interested. Branagh gives by far the best performance in the whole cast. His attention to Hercule Poirot is a lot of fun. He isn’t trash like he appeared to be in the trailer. He’s witty and quick spoken, throwing out quips almost too fast for us to keep up with. He has a mustache far too big for his face but we don’t mind, he always carries his trusty cane alongside him (the movie has a some fun with that in its opening scene), and he reads a lot of Dickens. It was interesting to see a world famous detective aside from Sherlock be given this much care. Branagh’s timing and performance is just right. He lives in his own world where he can see all crimes, but as he points out, has made his own view of the world unbearable. His sleuthing skills come at a great personal cost. He is only able to see the world through the lense of the extremes: there is only right and wrong, and nothing in between. That makes for a great detective, and one who we can forgive for seemingly knowing all the answers. You get a character like Poirot or Sherlock and the lines between intelligence, omniscience, and contrivance get blurred reeeeaaaalll quick.

But the film does know how to have fun with its smaller moments. So when Poirot rattles off a billion observations that we can’t keep up with, we’re less frustrated and more understanding. He knows his shit, let’s just follow where he goes with it. But this strength here of the film is also it’s major weakness, and ultimately its downfall, and I will get to that later, but first!

The actors aside from Branagh are mostly solidly good all around. These aren’t oscar worthy portrayals by any means (wait, the oscars suck, forget I mentioned them just now), but most of them are a lot of fun. Josh Gad is very good, as is the guy who plays the doctor. The side characters do their jobs well. Dasiy Ridley is nice but doesn’t have enough onscreen presence to really sell it later on. I did however cringe more than once at Penelope Cruz’s delivery of religious fueled maxims. And Michelle Pfeiffer immediately appeared fake to my eyes, and oh man does that cause problems later on. There’s also a moment thrown in the middle for pure audience manipulation and everyone will instantly recognize it as a such. But Johnny Depp is in here too, and you won’t want to run out of the theater when he’s onscreen. So that’s a huge plus.

Truly though, what I liked about the movie was Poirot and all his interactions with the rest of the characters. His observations and putting together of clues is done pretty well, and I think the movie is at its best when he must confront each passenger of the train. All these little interviews that he conducts to search for the killer are entertaining, and I found myself caring less about the end result and more enjoying the ride. It is interesting that in a murder mystery I just didn’t care who the killer was or why they did it. I only cared about Poirot and his methods of getting there.

But why didn’t I care about who the killer was in a whodunit? I’m glad you asked. As I said before, Poirot spewing out too many intricate inspections for our minds to fully process was where the middle parts of this movie has its most fun. However, it’s what leads us to an extremely underwhelming climax. The twist at the end is actually a good one, and I did not see it coming. But like the ending reveal in Civil War, instead of a “Wow” I merely muttered an “oh”. The execution is all off here. The film divides time it should have spent more on the mystery of the murder and more of the individual people on the train, and more on getting us to care about the whole situations, and diverts it mostly to a boring drawn out conclusion where Poirot hands out all the answers in front of literally the entire cast. Seriously, what would have been a great twist is drowned in Poirot’s dialogue, where he does NOT stop throwing out all the details of the entire story, every single person’s backstory, and all the little things about the murder. On and on and on he goes, I was reminded insanely of earlier this year with Wonder Woman, where Aries wouldn’t shut the fuck up at that movie’s terrible climax. Poirot’s charm and interest is destroyed here, and we quickly become bored by his rant. He goes on for so long that we actually don’t care about anything he is saying. Sort of like The Usual Suspects, where Kevin Spacey’s stories become so convoluted it gets to be too much. All the fun moments and reveals in Murder are ruined here just to give us all the answers on a silver platter. The strange thing about this movie is that it could have afforded to be longer. Even at an 114 minute runtime WAY too much time was lost on developing the intrigue of the mystery and dumped on a force fed wrap up. Unlike Poirot, the movie was not balanced. They should have taken 10 minutes from the end and spent it more in the buildup. That’s the thing about twists, show too much and we see it coming (or won’t care), show too little and it won’t make sense. Murder on the Orient Express is a prime example of not showing enough and then throwing it all in our face. What a shame, it really was a unique twist. The mixed reviews it has received do not surprise me at all. It was a moderately fun ride nearly erased by a disappointing ending.

Also, the music. Patrick Doyle’s score was mostly doing a great job at subtly adding tension and augmenting the urgency of the story. But that came to an immediate stop at that ending, where out of nowhere his score becomes a huge fucking distraction and makes an already dull sequence even cheesier and maudlin than it intended to be. More of a shame, he was doing such a good job at being present but not overbearing for the majority of the runtime.

So yeah, overall I liked Murder on the Orient Express, although I am hard pressed to give a full recommendation because of that fucking ending. And maybe I enjoyed it more cause I never read the book, or any of her books for that matter. My extent of knowledge on Agatha Christie was knowing one of the precogs in Minority Report was named after her.

Kenneth Branagh is the reason to see this movie, because of his performance. Because he was funny and believable and so enjoyable to watch. Branagh the actor strongly outplayed Branagh the director this time. He is a great actor for sure, but as a director he is uneven still for me. But what do I know, the only films of his I have seen are this and the first Thor, and Thor kinda sucked. I did like his use of mirrored reflections on his characters to show their multifaceted natures and how this incident has them all cracked. But how did I wish that ending didn’t take away from the whole thing. And how I wish Poirot’s arc wasn’t so quickly thrown in through his own dialogue. I begged for at least one more Godfather shot, maybe then I could have thought once more of Michael Corleone.