Film Review: Murder On The Orient Express

How do you make audiences care about a mystery when everyone knows whodunnit? That is the conundrum Kenneth Branagh faced when he decided to bring Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express back to the big screen, knowing that the novel and Sidney Lumet’s 1974 adaptation are widely loved.

His solution was to pack his remake with as much star power as possible. The director himself plays the famous detective Hercule Poirot, whose investigation of a murder on the legendary Orient Express brings him into contact with an array of big personalities. The motley crew includes Johnny Depp’s shady fine goods dealer; Judi Dench’s princess; Willem Dafoe’s suspicious professor; Penelope Cruz’s pious missionary; and Michelle Pfeiffer’s brash husband-hunter.

Branagh, who directed Cinderella and Thor, has an eye for the fantastical and fairytale-esque. The opulently decorated train is shown travelling through breathtaking cityscapes, as well as sunset-pink valleys and mountain ranges blanketed in glistening snow. His set designs and costumes are also theatrical and ostentatious – right down to Poirot’s ludicrously large moustache.

But the moustache becomes symbolic of the giant, hairy problem nestling right below Branagh’s nose: tone. Murder On The Orient Express doesn’t know what kind of film it wants to be. Branagh’s Poirot, with his farcical-sounding French, is a cartoonish character; similarly, the underwritten supporting players are painted in the broadest of strokes. But the screenplay simply isn’t funny – nor is it suspenseful enough to be dramatic. The tragedy at the centre of the mystery is rehashed too quickly to emotionally resonate, robbing the plot of its impact.