Murder on the Orient Express wants to be a grand, old-fashioned mystery. Instead, it plays like a museum exhibit that forgot to label its artifacts. Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as Hercule Poirot, and he brings genuine warmth to the role, but the film’s refusal to trust its audience sinks the whole enterprise.
The plot follows Poirot aboard a snowbound train carrying a murderer who has killed a man named Ratchett. The passengers are all suspects, and Poirot’s job is to find the culprit before the train reaches its destination. The twist ending, which reveals the entire cast conspired against Ratchett, is the heart of the story. It is also the film’s fatal flaw.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios.
The Train Is a Stage
The production values are high. The train cars are lavish, the costumes are precise, and the cinematography captures the claustrophobic dread of being trapped with a killer. But the script, adapted by Michael Green, treats the passengers as interchangeable cogs in a machine rather than people. Their motives are explained in broad strokes, and their guilt is assigned without much subtlety.
Branagh’s Poirot is a decent detective, but he is also a caricature. His mustache-twirling deductions are meant to be charming, but they land as performative. The supporting cast, including Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, and Josh Gad, are given little room to breathe. Their performances are competent, but they are forced to deliver exposition-heavy dialogue that feels more like a lecture than a conversation.
“It is the most extraordinary case I have ever had.”
A Twist That Doesn’t Land
The reveal at the end is a clever idea. But the film spends so much time setting up a puzzle box that it forgets to make the pieces matter. By the time the truth is revealed, it feels less like a revelation and more like a convenience. The film trusts the audience to accept the twist, but it never earns that trust through character development or narrative tension.
The pacing suffers too. The middle section drags, and the final act rushes through the solution. The film is overlong for its own material, and the result is a movie that feels both rushed and padded at the same time.
Key Facts Box
– Film: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
– Director: Kenneth Branagh
– Adapted by: Michael Green
– Score: 5.2/10
Murder on the Orient Express is a technically proficient film that fails to engage the intellect. It is a visual feast wrapped around a stale, overly convenient mystery. The performances are fine, the direction is confident, but the story never quite coheres. It is a film that respects its source material without understanding it.
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