Movie Review: "Murder On The Orient Express"

"Murder On The Orient Express": C+.  Agatha Christie suspense novels often follow a particular structure for which the celebrated writer is most famous.  A crime is committed and, due to an unusual setting, the reader knows that the perpetrator is one of a finite number of characters who has already been introduced.  Most importantly, the perp, whoever it may turn out to be, has no feasible means of escape. Christie's most famous story, And Then There Were None, places the characters on a mysterious inescapable island where a series of homicides occurs.  In many ways the premise of that thriller resembles the blueprint for the author's Murder On The Orient Express, published four years prior to And Then There Were None.  In Orient Express, all of the characters are passengers on or employees aboard the famous, luxurious train.  When one of them is killed in his private compartment, it is up to a fellow passenger, the self-proclaimed "world's greatest detective," Hercule Poirot, to figure out whodunit.  He can take his time because an avalanche caused by a blizzard has derailed the train a million miles from nowhere.

Kenneth Branagh, an Irishman whose fame was established mostly on stage portraying Shakespearean larger-than-life characters, wears three hats in Orient Express, functioning as co-producer, director and protagonist Poirot.  For the benefit of viewers not familiar with the Belgian mastermind, director Branagh films a long introductory scene at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall to show how Poirot, using what seems to be the scantiest of clues, solves a crime involving the theft of a precious artifact from a church.  Part of the fun with any of the thirty-three Christie novels featuring Poirot is admiring his talent for accurately sizing up individuals based on his first impressions.  He has the uncanny ability to notice things that most other sleuths either would not see or else would disregard: the mispronunciation of an Italian city, a small insignia embroidered on a woman's silk scarf, a furtive glance between two people which they thought went undetected, an intentionally missed shot by a military marksman, a not-quite-right accent.  Poirot in many ways is the Belgian equivalent to England's Sherlock Holmes, only without a wing man like Doctor Watson.

It is my unfortunate duty to advise you that the best two features of this movie are the cinematography and the costumes.  Where did this production get derailed?  (Pardon the pun, but I could not resist.)  After much consideration I have come up with one word that synopsizes the heart of the answer: staging.  Rather than let the story unfold with natural segues and continuous flow of the action, director Branagh has chosen to tell this story mostly in a series of one-on-one dialogues which, after awhile, become amalgamated in the short-term memory bank.  There are twelve suspects on board, and the detail-driven detective leaves no stone unturned as he interviews almost all of them individually.  Thus, despite the relatively large ensemble cast, most of the scenes include only two persons at a time, Poirot and his interviewee.  Consequently we tend to forget what any one of them had to say, what alibi they offered or what lie they told -- and there were plenty of them  -- as we and Poirot go down the line.  The movie chugs along --there I go again -- and never picks up speed.

Given the fact that the Orient Express included only three Pullman sleeper cars plus a dining car, the story seems better suited to a stage rather than a film.  For variety's sake, Branagh even has Poirot interview one suspect while seated outdoors in the snow while they await the railroad crew's attempts to get the train back on the tracks.  The staging of that conference struck me as silly and gimmicky.  Plus, some long-range camera shots show the train stuck on an extremely high bridge, so where was the ground where the interview in question took place?

The plot relies too heavily on Poirot's uncanny ability to recall with great precision all of the events, pertinent people and facts surrounding a famous kidnapping case, referred to as "the Armstrong Case," years ago which resulted not only in the death of an infant but in the prosecution and execution of a suspect whom most rational beings would have known to be innocent.  There is no mistaking the notion that Christie, the author, was thinking of the real life kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby in March 1932, a mere eighteen months before she published Orient Express.  Director Branagh's use of black and white flashbacks to show snippets of the Armstrong kidnapping and its aftermath is creepy yet effective.

The denouement, where Detective Poirot not only solves the case but explains how he reached his conclusion, is, again, remindful of Sherlock Holmes.  Branagh sets up this scene inside a nearby tunnel, where all of the characters -- except, of course, for the decedent -- are sitting at a long table as if they were attempting to replicate the Last Supper.  Another example of a poor staging decision.  The soliloquy here by Michelle Pfeiffer's character is so over the top that, were it rendered during an audition, most directors would not have offered her a call-back.

My guess is that most viewers will figure out whodunit no later than the three-quarters of the way through the film.  It would not take the efforts of "the world's greatest detective" to do so.  In the last shot Poirot appears to be on his way to Egypt.  I don't suppose this is intended to set us up for Death On The Nile, another Christie mystery starring Hercule Poirot.