Avoid this at all costs! See the 1974 Sidney Lumet version instead!

Rating: 1/10 (26 July 2018)

Kenneth Branaugh receives the raspberries for this unnecessary remake of Dame Agatha Christie's classic novel. Having seen the 1974 version when first released, it was full of glamour, as a period piece set in the 1930s should have been, and each character was fully developed. Branaugh spent too much time and energy with his development of his portrayal of Christie's sleuth, Hercule Poirot, that the development of any other characters failed to occur. Branaugh focused on Poirot's obsessive-compulsive disorder to make his own character three-dimensional, leaving all of the suspects characterizations as one-dimensional MacGuffins, to use a Hitchcockian term. Another weak point in this film is the dramatic score, which contains nothing memorable other than Michelle Pfeiffer's vocal over the closing credits. Lumet's 1974 film contains a score by Richard Rodney Bennett, lushly orchestrated with hummable themes that complement Geoffrey Unsworth's beautiful Panavision cinematography. Although Branaugh's version was shot with 65mm cameras (the same ones used by Christopher Nolan for "Dunkirk"), the process was wasted here since most of the shots in the film are confined to a set, and only the exterior shots benefited from its use. Super 35mm (what was once known as SuperScope), Panavision or digital cinematography would have been just as suitable for this production. Lumet's film also made use of an all-star cast whose acting skills were well proven in advance. It's unnecessary to list the cast here, as it can be viewed on the IMDB page for that version, however this version has few recognizable names, and some will even enjoy the fact that the murder of Johnny Depp's character occurs less than halfway through the film, and that his screen time is kept to a minimum! Sitting through this poorly-done remake of what was previously filmed with style, class, and glamour in 1974 is a waste of time. If you want to view a great whodunit, beautifully crafted, with excellent characterization, see the Lumet version. Dame Agatha Christie claimed that Lumet's version and Billy Wilder's 1957 film of "Witness for the Prosecution" were the only two films that did justice to her literary work.