Poetic Justice on the Orient Express

Kenneth Branagh stars and directs in the latest movie adaptation of Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ featuring Belgian detective extraordinaire Hercule (not Hercules) Poirot, perhaps fiction’s most famous detective not named Sherlock.  Which begs the question “Why???!!!” because all one has to do is to watch (or revisit) the superb 1974 original directed by Sidney Lumet starring Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery and Vanessa Redgrave.  The answer is simple and pretty much the same whenever a “classic” is shamelessly thus remade: Hollywood may be creatively bankrupt and has to recycle old material every now and then, but it is also doing us a service by updating these classics for later generations of moviegoers who – unless they’re classic film buffs – would not have seen them in the first place.  A valid reason or an excuse?  You decide.

Nonetheless, many critics declared this “unnecessary” remake utterly pointless and DOA (58 percent on the Tomatometer), but MOTOE2017 actually holds up on its own quite well.  You would think that finding a cast that would do justice to an ensemble including such screen legends as Bacall, Bergman and Redgrave is no mean feat (which it isn't), but MOTOE2017 came pretty darn close with a power-house cast of its own featuring Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe and Branagh himself as the eccentric and mustachioed detective.  Am I being too lenient?  You decide.

If you’ve read the AC novel or seen the 1974 movie (or even both), there is likely no suspense here as to “Whodunit.”  Even the play on words that formed the title of this review kind of gives it away.  But like the namesake of its mode of transportation, it’s the journey and not the destination that matters.  Then again, I may be predisposed towards MOTOE2017 because I’m just a sucker when it comes to a good old fashioned “dinner party murder mystery.” 

Grade: A-