NOVEMBER 21, 2017
The real star of the new remake of Agatha Christie’s classic “Murder on the Orient Express” is not a person but a thing — a glorious mustache that adorns the upper lip of the film’s star/director Kenneth Branagh. Several times when the action flags in the film, there’s that mustache that never ceases to fascinate, one that still hooks me into the movie. How did he grow it?, I would wonder. How does he maintain it? (The film offers a hint– he sleeps with a mustache mask in order to protect it.) Then suddenly something interesting plot-wise happens, and I momentarily leave the mustache.
That’s the way it goes too often in this redo of the classic whodunnit. The film is reasonably entertaining, the costumes and production design are top notch. But I do have one question about “Orient Express.”
Why?
I mean, we have a perfectly wonderful film in the 1974 Sidney Lumet original, which was nominated for six Academy Awards. Lumet directed it with enormous style (as always) and that cast! — Albert Finney as the world’s greatest detective Hercule Poirot, and suspects Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Richard Widmark, Vanessa Redgrave and Ingrid Bergman (who won an Oscar for her performance, a win that still baffles me).
But the story was filmed right the first time. Is there really any reason to do it again?
Admittedly, there is one major difference in the new film. In the 1974 remake, the Poirot character was really a part of the ensemble, with a role just a little bit larger than that of the rest of the cast. Not so here. Branagh’s Poirot is very much the first among equals, with long loving close-ups, which is why that mustache is so hard to avoid. Don’t get me wrong — Branagh is a terrific actor, and his take on the Belgian Poirot is a droll delight, but give someone else a chance.
Too often he doesn’t, however, and that emphasis on him takes away time from the remainder of the ensemble. And Branagh has gone to the trouble to assemble quite the ensemble, who play the murder suspects on the train. If it’s not quite up to the star wattage of the earlier version, still it’s arguably the most distinguished film cast in recent memory. There are Academy Award winners (Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz), Oscar nominees (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe), Tony Award winners (Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom, Jr.), and several rising stars (Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad).
I haven’t bothered addressing the plot because you probably know the story already. And if you don’t, all you ready need to know that there’s been a murder in the first-class car of the glamorous 1930s train, the Orient Express, and all the passengers of that car are now murder suspects. A train derailment offers Poirot the opportunity to interrogate each suspect, and using his powers of deduction, realizes the killer’s identity, which he reveals in a gathering of all the suspects. (Traditionally, this is done in the dining car, but for some reason, Branagh stages this in a cave.)
Still, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that seeing all these glamorous stars making their grand entrances through the cavernous Istanbul train station gave me a bit of an old time Hollywood thrill. I want to avoid the old chiche, “they don’t make ’em like that anymore,” but the truth is, in this age of the comic book blockbuster, they don’t.
I only wish that Branagh’s take on the classic tale was as anywhere near as good as those old Hollywood chestnuts which he so lovingly evokes.
GRADE: B-
