How Murder on the Orient Express murders Agatha Christie

At least it's pretty?

'Murder on the Orient Express.'
(Image credit: Nicola Dove / 20th Century Fox)

Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express might be 2017's prettiest cinematic misfire. The remake — which boasts a formidable cast, including Derek Jacobi, Dame Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, and Leslie Odom, Jr. — is exquisitely filmed cardboard. Its jokes flail. Its pathos amuses. The film that should have it all — luxury, intrigue, murder, deceit — is lachrymose, listless, and (given how satisfying a mystery this famously is) disappointingly light on detection. Instead of meticulously matching clues to revelations, it turns Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's famous detective, into an unappealingly emotional Holmes.

The setup of Christie's most famous bottle episode, if you don't know it, is pretty simple: Poirot boards the Orient Express in the dead of winter, hoping for a respite before he starts on his next case. To his surprise, the train is full. Among the passengers is a rather sinister individual named Ratchett (played here by Johnny Depp). He tells Poirot his life is in danger and tries to hire him for protection. Poirot refuses, the train hits a snowdrift, and Ratchett is murdered overnight. No one could have done it but the folks on the train, and a fascinating study of the passengers on board ensues.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.