Branagh indulges Branagh

Rating: 4/10 (18 August 2018)

Beautifully filmed, outstanding cast but they're trying to make bricks without straw. Branagh is so consumed with himself trying to imprint his own stamp on Poirot as a gastronome that he makes an nearly unrecognizable cartoon out of a caricature, and loses any of Poirot's sympathetic characteristics. In an enormous betrayal of the character, he eats from the plate of someone he despises. In a further effort to impose 21st century sensibilities on an early 20th century world, we are shown women adept at physical defense, an upper class anglo african physician, aging beauties who speak to strangers of "women's needs" and, in a completely gratuitous scene, outspoken embrace of what at the time would have been considered "miscegenation". All of these are expected in today's enlightened society but would have been cause for censure and scorn 80+ years ago. This film has many excellent actors whose talents are sidelined.