Well, it's not the same old crap

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2017)

Was this remake necessary? Define "necessary". I saw the Albert Finney/Sydney Lumet version when it was released in 1974. I was only 11 years old when it first came out so I don't remember much of how it affected me. But in the many years since then I have become a fan of Agatha Christie and have seen it again and again, as well as other adaptations. I've always thought that Finney's interpretation of Poirot was a bit over the top. Still it was never as bad as Peter Ustinov's. Fortunately I never saw Alfred Molina's version. And then came David Suchet, who, in my opinion, nails the role perfectly. Any remake is naturally going to be compared, favorably or unfavorably, to its predecessors. In my opinion Branagh's attempt fell below Suchet but above all others. Far above. Any time the director is the star you run the risk of over indulgences and this film suffers some of that. Few actors, if any, can resist the temptation to place the value of their own egos above that of the picture as a whole. Which is not to say that Branagh is a bad actor or a bad director. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just didn't feel like he performed either job brilliantly in this picture. It might be that I'm making the mistake of over comparison to the Suchet version. And taken on its own merits alone this picture is decent, if not great. The acting is superb. The photography is beautiful. I couldn't help being overwhelmed by the abundance of CGI but whattayagonnado? It's everywhere these days. The opening scene and the reveal scene at the end differ greatly from the source material. It doesn't hurt the story at all, it's just different. And I can't think of any reason to have done them this way except just to be different. But all in all it was an enjoyable film, exactly what I was hoping for, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who is tired of the same old crap that Hollywood has been churning out over the past few years.