Murdering "The Orient Express"

Rating: Null/10 (15 November 2017)

Dear oh dear. What an ordeal. The pictures were pretty in some sort of vulgar way, but this film really can't hold a candle to the David Suchet version from 2006 which, in my opinion, exceeds the rather drab 1974 version with Albert Finney (I never saw the 2001 Alfred Molina version).
What's wrong with the new Branagh version? Really, other posters have said it all. The script stinks, mainly because it's as subtle as a kick in the butt, especially in its attempts to be politically correct. Just to name one instance, in this version Mary Debenham is in love with a black doctor, and Hercule Poirot advises her to come clean since "this is not America", as if the US had the market cornered concerning mixed-race marriage. By all means, do let's forget the 1919 race riots in Britain and that the Nuremberg Laws were just around the corner, for all to see, in 1934 when the film is set. And somehow, in between the postcard-pretty pictures and the political correctness, the plot is avalanched. Nobody really cares whodunit or worries one jot about any of the characters, and when Hercule Poirot advises the murderers to shoot him to escape the noose, it occurs to you that it would have been a blessing if they had done so 90 minutes ago. The sporadic forays into action scenes only help to remind us how far Ian Fleming is removed from Agatha Christie. Not that Christie is a master novelist; her plots are often hopelessly contrived and needs help from filmmakers, and never more so than in "Orient Express." Several films have succeeded in coming to her aid. This doesn't.