"A riot of clues dropped most conveniently...yet only one appears, however, to be perhaps genuine!"

Rating: 3/10 (14 November 2017)

In 1934, Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, traveling by train from Istanbul to London, finds himself in the middle of a murder case after he discovers one of the passengers dead in his compartment, stabbed 12 times in his bed during the night. With the Orient Express stagnant on a bridge due to an avalanche, Poirot has a great deal of time to interrogate all the passengers on-board to determine motive and expose the killer. Second film-adaptation of Agatha Christie's mystery novel had big shoes to fill left behind by the classy 1974 all-star version, although neither picture is particularly suspenseful or exciting, which is probably the fault of the source material (this tale not being one of Christie's best murder stories). Kenneth Branagh both directed this version and stars as Poirot, and his acting has a bit of the sly lift that his pacing and his arranging of key scenes lack. Branagh's opening, with Poirot in Jerusalem defending three holy men on a charge of theft, falls victim to maladroit staging which typifies the rest: a busy camera (or an even busier editor) chasing after the action instead of relaying it. Scenes are squeezed for whatever Branagh is going for--levity one minute, high drama the next--while always presenting Poirot as the master detective, meticulous and unruffled and never doubting his instincts. The problem with this portrait is: we perceive all of Poirot's fussy characteristics within the first 20 minutes--the rest of time is spent admiring Branagh as he repeats himself. The supporting cast is poorly-handled by the director (including a too-sweet young lad in the prologue); the suspects are colorless both in their conception by screenwriter Michael Green and in the performances by a most underwhelming assemblage of players. There are some nice computer-enhanced shots of the train whistling its way through snowy mountain terrain, and we do get a vivid sense of movement from inside the Orient Express before it becomes snowbound on the tracks. However, the final summation is a fizzle, as is Johnny Depp's waxworks-like performance as a disgruntled American businessman, a thankless role formerly assigned to Richard Widmark. *1/2 from ****