In a Shocking Twist, I Loved It

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2017)

I went into Murder on the Orient Express pretty cynically. Another Hollywood remake. Another Kenneth Branagh costume drama. Another packed cast getting mediocre reviews. I thought, at best, it would be an empty, simple and silly little way to kill an afternoon. I was basically rightbut through the high-pitched performances, twisting mystery and loving direction, this captivating yarn slowly but surely overwhelmed my doubts and won me over. Master and enigmatic Detective Hercule Poirot is sucked into a job while on vacation, wherein a man on his train has been murdered, and one of the other passengers is the murderer. The cast is chockfull of talent, which lends to the action-packed fun; not "action-packed" like a Marvel flick, but more in the puzzlement, patter and performances. It's wonderfully old-fashioned in that and so many other ways: the regal look; the wry, almost poetic dialogue ("There was right, there was wrong, and now there is you"); the Shakespearean melodrama. The only thing I wish is Branagh and the studio would've shot it all, not just the flashbacks, in black-and-white, to really give it that classic, larger-than-life hutzpah. Now before you think I'm blind to its faults, let me reassure you. The cinematography, while often beautiful, is just as often obnoxious. The CGI train and scenery shots are jarringly cartoonish. The final explanation to the whodunit is more than a bit convoluted. However, the power and fun Branagh imbues in his films and actors make this a train trip I would love to take myself again and againthough only in movie form. The murder might not be as fun in real life.