Murdered on the Avalanche Express

Rating: 4/10 (17 December 2017)

Oh where to start? I was 'estranged' from the very beginning of this film by Branagh's appalingly bad French (Belgian) accent and the ditto upstaging moustache. In general his pompous narcissistic acting style distracted me from following the story. The rest of the cast is glorious, although several of them get very little time on screen. The most interesting character in this remake is Johnny Depp's Ratchett but of course he is only in the first half of the film. Also the count and countess characters (the count is played by one of the worlds greatest ballet dancers Sergei Polunin) get hardly any lines or screen time, and we dont see Polunin dance for one second all though the characters are described as ballet dancers. The derailing of the train is very hard to believe, and 'the last supper' at the end of the film is so over the top and tasteless, as is Kenneth Branagh's lines 'Only two people know the truth, one is God and the other is Hercule Poirot!' - a pompous line delivered in an equally pompous way, honestly....Mr Branagh is one of the most overrated actors of our time. Less is more Kenneth!