Appalling

Rating: 3/10 (18 November 2017)

Murder on the Orient Express will make Agatha Christie turn in her coffin: this adaptation resembles nothing she wrote and it would have been fine if significant revision had resulted in something good but in this case it has not.
Standing on the back of a successful adaptation starring Albert Finney, it is understandable that the producer wanted to make this version different to avoid direct comparison. However, remaking Poirot as a character does not work, not when the character is already so established - Branagh's Belgian detective is emotional, lacks cool, sulky and dull, i.e. he does not look in any way like Christie's Poirot. By way of comparison, Sherlock gives us a new Holmes too, but the classic and modern Sherlock still share some likeness to which audience can relate.
More importantly, Sherlock retains logic in its storytelling, as opposed to Murder on the Orient Express, where Poirot's solution of the case seems heaped upon speculations. They might not have been speculations - as the book has all the clues - but this adaptation leaves out a lot of information essential for solving the case. As a minor spoiler, not all passengers were interviewed and one wonders how Poirot came to guess so many things right. Add all these to the phony ending, and you have a star-studded whodunit murdered by a disastrously poor script.