58% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Are a fan of the murder mystery genre;
Are a fan of Hercule Poirot novels
Hercule Poirot, probably the world's greatest detective, boards the Orient Express when a murder happens overnight. Stuck aboard a train trapped by an avalanche, Poirot must solve his most difficult case yet in this classic whodunnit where everyone is a suspect.
So this is like the thousandth remake of one of the greatest murder mysteries of all time, but despite that I was super excited for it, mainly because of the star-studded cast. Unfortunately it did not live up to my high expectations, but it was still entertaining since I was already a fan of the novel and of Agatha Christie. I wouldn't recommend seeing it in cinemas, though, and I'm not even sure I would recommend it to someone who wasn't a huge fan of the murder mystery genre.
Firstly, let's talk the main character Hercule Poirot: arrogant but genius detective. He is what makes or breaks any Poirot adaptation, and while I think Kenneth Branagh did a good job as Poirot, I think I just love David Suchet too much as Poirot that Branagh's performance seemed a bit off to me. I think he kind of went over the top at the start of the film on Poirot's quirkiness that it didn't seem genuine. Also, because I think they didn't make him look fat, they had to overcompensate with a ridiculous moustache, and I just could not take him seriously with that moustache. But his moustache protector, though, was awesome and we needed to see more of that.
Secondly, I think the story itself was lacking and felt all over the place. It felt like they spent a lot of time on certain dramatic elements of the movie, but these were essentially unnecessary to the plot, and for the parts that were very important to the plot, it felt rushed. When they went over important details, they went over them way too quickly, it was very hard to follow along.
Part of this is the huge cast. There are so many characters, and they are all played by famous people, but these people are a bit wasted on their characters with very little screen time. It would have been way easier if they just named them, like, "Oh that was why Penelope Cruz was doing such and such," since they hardly focused on the characters themselves, so naming characters like "MacQueen" made you have to think who that was, and by the time you thought about who it was, they were off naming some other character's motives and it was just hard to follow.
So it did feel really rushed and I'm not sure how people who haven't read the novel could actually follow along. I mean, it gets clearer later as they go and you sort of fill in the gaps yourself but they could have spent way more time on each character and getting us to know the characters really well so that the big reveal didn't feel so rushed and out of nowhere.
Of course, having done so many remakes it would have been a great miracle if this turned out to be the best one, but for some reason I was just so excited for this and really wanted it to be amazing. I feel like they don't do many classic murder mystery movies anymore which is really sad, and perhaps this doesn't help for the future of the whodunnit genre in movies.
So in the end, this movie had a great cast but they didn't realise their full potential with these actors, they were essentially just there to sell the movie. A lot of the all-star cast had very minor roles, and while I know you can't have every actor in an all-star cast shine through, I feel like they wasted a lot of opportunity to develop these characters. Daisy Ridley and Michelle Pfeiffer were pretty great, but I would have liked to see more of the other characters. They could definitely have spent more time developing characters, and perhaps that would have made the film not feel like a drag in the middle, and perhaps the ending would not have felt like it was so rushed. The movie looks very beautiful, and it is an enjoyable movie, but still a bit disappointing.
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