Murder on the Orient Express - Review
I'll get this out of the way from the beginning: Murder on the Orient Express is not a great movie. Going into this film with any expectations of absolute magic on the theater screen would be doing an injustice to the good qualities of this movie. Kenneth Branagh crafts a rather average story and utilizes the talent at his disposable to make what could be an awful plot into a rather enjoyable movie. In fact, we'll start there: the characters of the Orient Express.
As you can see from the preceding photo, there are a lot of players in this movie. To be frank, I personally didn't find Branagh's Hercule to be that endearing as it appears the portrayal is supposed to come off. There are a lot of points in the film takes time to look at his life, and they give you no strong reason to really care about him as a character. The end result is simply a peculiar PI who is tasked with solving the case of cases. On the opposite end of the spectrum I found many of the suspects to be portrayed extremely well. Johnny Depp plays a dirty salesman extremely well, to the point that I wasn't thinking of him as Johnny Depp as much as I was thinking of the character. That is rarely the case with his roles in films of late so it was a welcome change of pace. Along with Depp, a few other standouts come from Daisy Ridley as The Governess and Michelle Pfeiffer as Caroline Hubbard (a self-proclaimed husband hunter). While many of the big name actors in this movie are kept to rather small roles in the grand scheme, these two create a niche for themselves and any scenes involving them have the most strength related to them.
Another hot and cold area of Orient Express is the story. Throughout this movie I found myself actually dazing off as the story seemingly filled itself in. While I didn't necessarily figure out the grand mystery before it was revealed it was becoming very convenient how the film played out. Often times when Hercule would be at his wits end another clue would magically come to him. I understand that he is portrayed as a brilliant detective but some things just felt a bit too convenient. Even the final decision felt a bit out of left field due to many of the characters being underdeveloped and their reasoning for possibly being the killer was very short and could be missed easily.
The one thing that really stood out to me though in this movie was the cinematography. I'm unaware of whether this film was actually done in a real train setting but they portrayed it well enough for me to ask that question. You may be thinking "How do you film in a train? The space is too small." Well this is actually handled brilliantly. In multiple portions of the film the camera will move to the ceiling of the cabins, seeing the characters speaking below and seeing a top down view. This was extremely well done and it allowed you to follow the characters without feeling the close spaces but seeing how the characters handled it. Along with this, visually the scenery of the train and exterior looked beautiful.
Murder on the Orient Express is not a great movie as I stated at the start of this article. Branagh crafts a good movie based around the great casting of actors. I believe this movie is one of the better murder mystery movies of late, but do not go into it looking for an extremely deep and well though out plot. I say this as the movie's strength is in it's filming and characters which hold up a rather dull story. An additional comment: see it with a friend. While I was in the theater I heard multiple groups quietly discussing who had committed the crime and I can only imagine the wild theories spreading throughout the theater but the conclusion. Just don't make it a priority.
