Murder On The Orient Express (2017)

The focal point of the film is the ending. To change it...it wouldn't be Murder on the Orient Express anymore

Don't under stand Branaugh's moustache, looks nothing like Agatha Christie envisioned it, thin and waxed

anthonyrocks

I think I wrote down my thoughts on this already, right? Basically what The Social Introvert wrote.

It was okay. Some rather pointless action sequences have been added, and characters changed for no good reason i could see. But it could have been worse. I prefer the Albert Finney version, but it isn't one of my favourite. agatha christie stories.  Very far fetched plot.

Well said.

Same here, Cruz, Colman, Phieffer, Dafoe and Jacobi intrigue me.

Saw it recently.

I thought it was a pretty slick and stylish adaptation. It definitely has its moments. But it has its flaws too.


SPOILERS below

-Branagh's performance as Poirot was masterful. Suchet had totally nailed the character of course, so its just as well that Branagh tried something a little difference. To me, he came across as a kind of modern take on Peter Ustinov's portrayal of Poirot (the size of the moustache notwithstanding, he kinda looks like Ustinov as Poirot). All the familiar tics and attributes of the character from the book are present - albeit, portrayed just about differently enough to feel like something new. Poirot's OCD contributing to his detection skills. His being very finicky and stubborn about his likes and dislikes. His arrogance and occasional rudeness. All very much from the books, but emphasized in a whole new way.

-The other performances were great too. Depp played a very different Ratchett from the one in the original film, and its a change that proved interesting. Ridley nailed Mary Debenham. The 'Biminio Marquez' character perfectly mirrored the Antonio Foscarelli of the original. Judi Dench's Dragomiroff actually felt closer to the princess in the book than the one in the old film. Pfieffer nailed Mrs. Hubbard (she kinda reminded me of the Mrs. Hubbard character from the 2001 TV version). I LOVED Dafoe's new take on Hardman. Macqueen, Masterman, Hildegard Schmidt, Pilar Estavados (aka Greta Olsson) etc. were pretty different from the originals in various ways, but also kinda worked. The major disappointment for me was Count Andreyni. I didn't care at all for this new ballet dancer/martial artist version. The new Countess Andreyni was an interesting take, albeit not very well explored in the film.

-In terms of the plot, the film more or less crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's of Christie's original plot. And I feel it would have been better off if it stuck to that (with a few superficial changes). Because the few significant changes that HAVE been made were pretty disappointing and unnecessary. The whole 'fight scene' between Poirot and Arbuthnot for instance. It replaced the FAR superior scene from the original film where Poirot pretends to aggressively interrogate Miss Debenham to provoke Arbuthnot, compelling both of them to come clean about their relationship. I'm not saying the new scene is bad on its own merits - it just pales in comparison to the more cerebral approach taken in the original film. Then of course there's the whole 'Macqueen stealing from Ratchett' plot - a needless red-herring which doesn't actually make sense when you think of the larger plot (Macqueen the secretary might steal from Ratchett...Macqueen, the conspirator in Ratchett's murder has absolutely no reason to do so, or even pretend to do so.). The worst part is that these scenes take away valuable time from the film which could have been used to better service the actual plot. Instead, we get Poirot's rushed deductions about some of the suspects right at the end of the film, where it comes across a little as him being psychic, rather than having actually deduced something based on evidence and reasoning.

-The cinematography and direction was outstanding. Particularly the locations (both real and CGI). I kinda liked how some of the scenes were set in the surroundings outside the train. The indoor surroundings tended to get boring after a while in the original. (That's another thing I loved about the 2001 version, which also had them wandering outside the train a little). The scenes in Istanbul and Jeruselem were great too. I loved the black-and-white flashbacks. But the one piece of shooting I didn't care much for was the flashback to the actual murder. It seemed confused and frenzied, which I suppose was more 'realistic'...but I always loved the murder scene in the original film where they come in one by one, state their reason for killing Ratchett, and then stab him..

-And now of course, we come to the moral aspect of the ending. It occurs to me that, while the original novel barely, if at all, touched upon the moral aspect of the story, the various adaptations have all created their own frameworks to give the story a moral theme of some sort. In the original '74 film, it was the idea of Ratchett being put on 'trial' by 'twelve' conspirators. In the Suchet version, they leaned heavily into Poirot's Catholicism and how it influences his perception of right and wrong. Here the emphasis was also on Poirot's perception of right and wrong, albeit from a less religious perspective, and more from a point of view of 'perfection', and whether it can ever be achieved when it comes to justice. Personally, I found this film's handling of Poirot's feelings about the decision he had to make a welcome middle-ground between the original film's cavalier attitude towards the ending and the overly angst-ridden interpretation in the Suchet episode. I particularly liked the 'test of character' Poirot administered on the suspects in the end...as predictable as it was. It shows that he did base his final decision on some due consideration on the moral complexities of the case.

-Two smaller peeves that didn't ruin the film for me but just bugged me. One was Poirot's lover in the photograph, who didn't at all exist in the books, and had zero relevance to the plot. The other was Poirot having been in touch with Colonel Armstrong before the latter's death. Yes, the payoff with Poirot writing the letter replying to the Colonel in the end was suitably poetic - but if you really examine this subplot, it just seems to come out of nowhere (which is true enough). Isn't it too much of a coincidence that the detective the group avenging Daisy Armstrong comes up against is the same one who her father tried to hire years earlier?
On the whole, a decent enough adaptation that certainly kept me entertained...even had a bit of a wow factor for me. But certainly not among the greatest of Christie adaptations.