Tag: whodunnit

Murder On The Orient Express (2017)

Rating:

Just a forewarning to anyone who may read this, I do not normally do reviews. I don’t feel very comfortable at reviewing anything, so I figured I’d start with a recent movie I saw – Murder on the Orient Express.

It is, of course, based on the novel by the same name. The novel was written by Agatha Christie, one of the most notorious names in the murder mystery genre. I have not read anything by this author, but have seen some local theater productions of a few of her stories.

The movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh and he starred in it as the lead: Hercule Poirot. The movie included very well known actors and actresses: Daisy Ridley, Johnny Depp, Penolope Cruz, Willam Dafoe, Judi Dench, just to name a few.

The movie starts with Hercule Poirot solving a “whodunnit case” in Jerusalem. We quickly see that he is obsessive compulsive, which adds humor in the story from time to time due to it. After solving the case and explaining it to a large crowd, he is off to take a vacation from solving mysteries. Not even the first day he is taking a mental health day, he runs into a well known friend, Bouc, who suggests taking holiday on his locomotive, The Orient Express. It is there that a murder takes place, leaving Hercule Poirot the only one who can solve it and save Bouc’s name.

Overall, I really enjoyed the casting and thought the cast did an excellent and very believable renditions of their characters. The scenic shots were beautiful and some of the shots in general were very interesting. Such as one scene where Poirot is in the victim’s cabin studying the body. It is shot from above and you can see the cabin partition, which allows you to see into Poirot’s unoccupied cabin. I really enjoyed that and felt it worked really well.

However, there was some lines in different languages. Subtitles were used, but I didn’t think there was enough lines to justify having them in different languages. They could have omitted them and saved the time to read subtitles. I get why they did what they did, but I felt if they were going to go that route, more scenes in different languages would have been better.

The worst offense was that it dragged on. Movies that are 2 hours should not feel like they are 2 hours. At the end of a 2 hours movie I want to say “Wow! That was 2 hours?! It went by so quick!” Some scenes could have been omitted or lines could have been cut.

I also must have missed it, because there were characters that were on the train that I did not realize were there until closer to the end of the movie. They played a small part in everything, and were pretty much useless. Again, I get why the characters were in the movie and have a huge revel as to who they are and why they are apart of the case, but a little more involvement from them would have been nice.

I gave this movie 3 stars, only because I have not read an Agatha Christie novel and therefore can’t compare this to the book. I am not sure how, where, or why it differs, so I am going to use caution and rate it 3 instead of 4.

What did you think? If you read the book, let me know if it was close to the original content or if it strayed.

-K.

agatha christie, book, casting, film, hercule poirot, languages, movie, murder, murder on the orient express, mystery, Review, train, whodunnit

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