Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Genius Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of an American tycoon aboard the Orient Express train.
55 connections found
View:
55 films that influenced Murder on the Orient Express
What critics say influenced Murder on the Orient Express
Agatha Christie’s durable mystery novel MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS has been adapted as a feature film in 1974, a telefilm in 2001, an episode of the series AGATHA CHRISTIE’S POIROT, and more.
Having seen Albert Finney's rendition of Agatha Christie's famous detective in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express, it is one of the few times I was thankful for my shocking memory - I couldn't remember "whodunnit".
For a moment, the movie seems to be going for a daffy vibe, in the vein of “Clue.”
Heck, the board game “Clue” is essentially this story combined with Christie’s 1939 murderous whodunit And Then There Were None, all of it broken down into intuitive investigative basics fit for the whole family to gleefully enjoy.
I couldn't help but wonder how Tim Curry might have handled this scene as the detective at the end of the comic murder-mystery "Clue."
Sidney Lumet's 1974 Murder on the Orient Express was — like Clue , which in some ways parodied it — both sumptuous and understated, cozy and threatening, equal parts thrilling and dry and absurd.
In spite of the script’s heavy reliance on exposition, the ending cleverly nods to another Christie novel and film, “Death on the Nile.”
For more of Agatha Christie’s twists and turns, see “Death On The Nile” (1978) with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot and a cast including Bette Davis, David Niven, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith and Jack Warden.
Movies always get Poirot wrong by casting swaggering British actors in the role: Albert Finney in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, Peter Ustinov in 1978’s Death on the Nile and subsequent films.
If you like this try: the original version with Albert Finney and other movies based on Agatha Christie stories like “Death on the Nile”…
Casting another actor in the Poirot (this time Ustinov), Death on the Nile was a slightly lesser affair than Orient Express .
He's legitimately entertaining in this (the "French" accent occasionally slipping into "Inigo Montoya" notwithstanding, and with the ending of MotOE directly leading into Death on the Nile, Branagh could easily spend the latter years of his career playing Poirot in more movies — not much chance of that in the Jack Ryan universe, alas (RIP Viktor Cherevin) — and that’d be swell.
There’s a throwback vibe for sure, mainly to the celebrity-packed films of yesteryear like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Cannonball Run and the superior 1974 Orient Express adaptation (with Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman and more).
These films were often glitzy showcases of a multitude of mostly B-and-C-list movie stars, actors known primarily for TV, or in other realms of sports/showbiz (as in The Cannonball Run , with everyone from Burt Reynolds and Roger Moore to Sammy Davis Jr., Jamie Farr and Terry Bradshaw), or former big-time actors whose careers had already begun to congeal (think It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World , with Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caeser, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, and Jonathon Winters).
Advertisement
Instead, Poirot holds court in a freezing train tunnel with the suspects comically arranged to reference da Vinci's "The Last Supper."
When it does come time for Poirot to present his theory of what really happened, he lines everyone up like the disciples in Leonardo’s “The Last Supper” but fails to articulate how he untangled the far-fetched plot.
When Poirot gathers all his suspects together to explain how the murder was done, our twelve characters are arranged at the table like disciples at The Last Supper.
As a director, he overcompensates for the staid, inert material with flashy, distracting visuals, from a dizzying tracking shot as Poirot walks the length of the train to a lineup of suspects that mimics Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
As the film reaches its denouement, Poirot has the remaining 12 passengers seated at a long table --- audible audience snickers as it has the look of "The Last Supper" --- in what is a gripping conclusion, and a shocking surprise.
If you want a proper spiritual tussle, try “ Through a Glass Darkly ” (1961), in which Ingmar Bergman, the son of a Lutheran pastor, tells of another young woman with a collapsing mind and a twitching dread of the divine.
One sequence recalls the scene in Psycho, where “Mother” rushes from her upstairs room and murders a man who then falls down the stairs, with the whole thing shot from an overhead bird’s-eye view.
Agatha Christie’s novels have been a particular pastime of mine since the day I read the brilliant And Then There Were None , a story that inspired and continues to inspire many famous modern mystery films.
Heck, the board game “Clue” is essentially this story combined with Christie’s 1939 murderous whodunit And Then There Were None, all of it broken down into intuitive investigative basics fit for the whole family to gleefully enjoy.
For comparison's sake, in the 44 years between 1945 and 1989, there were four different features made, under different titles, out of Christie's 1939 book And Then There Were None.
Christie definitivamente sabe cómo armar un cautivante rompecabezas criminal ( And Then There Were None continúa siendo mi favorito), pero a veces se excedía con lo rebuscados que son.
Advertisement
As he’s firing questions and MacQueen (Gad) is evasive, it was reminiscent of the spellbinding behind the scenes moment in the seminal movie making documentary “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.”
Given we have the 1974 version featuring a cast of luminaries, endorsed by no less a critic than Agatha Christie (who wandered in by mistake, having bought a ticket for Zardoz), and a TV adaptation featuring the man many consider to be the definitive Hercule Poirot – canon completest David Suchet, was there a need for another Murder on the Orient Express?