Tedious

Rating: 2/10 (4 December 2017)

Maybe it was that a stage-play was advertised before the start of the film which depicted a "lovable" comedic Karl Marx fighting to get his murderous ideology across that set the tone for this tedious movie. Maybe it was that Murder on the Orient Express was itself typically stuffed to the brim with cultural Marxism that unsettled me during it's 2 hour screen time.
So I was already in a bad mood as we entered the world of Agatha Christie's Poirot, following a Jewish boy finding the detective's breakfast in the streets of Israel.
From there the cast of characters start to introduce themselves in a range of absurd (a dancer using his dancing skills to beat up some photographers) or dull (Penélope Cruz moaning on about religious stuff) encounters as we make our way towards embarking the Orient Express.
The train and the scenery is generally excellent in terms of visuals - and to be fair - the visuals are the only saving grace of the movie. This is where my 2 stars are awarded.
From the moment we're on the train, the topic of racism becomes impossible to overlook, and we're "treated" constantly with lectures about miscegenation. Ironically (and is always the case) is that while Willem Dafoe's German alias makes outbursts against black people, it shows that the director, Branagh, is inadvertently racially stereotyping Germans as hating non-whites.
But if we can manage to ignore the constant race-baiting, what's left in this film is tedious dialogue and characters I don't care about. In the end, I don't care about who the murderer is and I don't care if they're caught.
And yet, when the conclusion is drawn that they're all murderers, the result of Poirot letting them go free like he was detective, jury and judge all wrapped up in one was extremely irritating. Who was he to decide whether they should go free?
A very tedious and frustrating movie that I've already averted others from wasting their money on going to see.