Good effort but highly inaccurate and a mess

Rating: 1/10 (13 November 2017)

Although I am a great fan of Kenneth Branagh but the adaption of Agatha Christie's most famous mystery is full of major holes. For starters they eliminated an important character, colonel Arbuthnot who served with John Armstrong. His famous line "I prefer a jury of 12 men" was a major clue to Poirot. Then they renamed the doctor's last name to Arbuthnot for no reason. Secondly, this case happens later in Poirot's career and he is older, and much heavier and bald. The reinvention of Poirot is utterly wrong in this hip sleek back hair with a giant mustachio. The real Agatha Christie's Poirot cannot fight! He is a brainy but physically unfit man. The (Spoiler alert) fight seen with the doctor is another made up seen to add some Hollywood action to the mix. But it is out of place and again distracting. Finally another major flaw is (spoiler alert) the stabbing of Ms Hubbard which is made up to add some sort of diversion that does not exist anywhere else. The set and cinematography is very nice with high production value. But overall this movie fails to capture the real fans and can not appeal to casual mystery fans either as it is too distracting. I was really hoping for a masterpiece with this star studded cast and Branagh acting and directing. But clearly something terribly went wrong as it is the usual case in Hollywood these days. And what resulted is this expensive looking mess of a movie!!!