Kenneth Branagh was once hailed as the successor to Laurence Olivier as the greatest, Shakespearean actor of his generation, but as dear old Kenny persued his directing career, he eventually moved away from adapting the Bard and edged his way into a surprisingly varied subject matter. However, even after helming live action Disney remakes and introducing audiences to superhero space vikings, surely the strangest choice Brannagh made was his attempt to bring Agatha Christie back to the multiplexes.
Now, bare in mind that his first attempt – an attempt at the oft adapted Murder On The Orient Express – was released into a world where Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc hadn’t yet uttered his first blustering filibuster as Rian Johnson’s modernisation of the whodunit genre was still two years away.
Thus Branagh’s task was unenviable; how exactly do you resurrect a dormant genre and keep your secrets when your movie has already been made numerous times?
Simple. Enlist Hercule Poirot, mon ami.
After wrapping up a fiendishly complicated case in Jerusalem, extravagantly IQ-ed detective Hercule Poirot is very much looking forward to having a much needed rest – not just because he’s deserved it, but he needs it. You see, the reason Poirot is such a great sleuth is because his magnificent brain is wired somewhat differently than ours which makes him very sensitive to the nature of things being off balance or out of place. Now while this, added to his razor sharp intellect, proves to be invaluable for sniffing out clues, it also leaves Poirot’s mental health in something of a precarious state as it’s left him with a gargantuan obsessive compulsive disorder that causes him no end of social distress.
However, when the call comes, Hercule answers and when a strange telegram summons him to board the Orient Express, a seemingly random murder of the decidedly shifty “businessman” Edward Ratchett creates a seemingly impossible conundrum for the detective to solve.
For a start, the list of suspects is as long as Poirot’s fabulous moustache is grandiose with such potential killers as flirty widow Caroline Hubbard, Rachett’s manservant Edward, Russian princess Natalia Dragomiroff and her maid Hildegarde, physician John Arbuthnot, governess Mary Debenham and many more all scattered about, waiting for questioning. However, this is not what you’d call an open and shut case and Poirot only has the time it takes to dig out the train’s engine after its run in with a derailing snow drift. But the problem is that even though Hercule has a motive – something to do with a child’s kidnapping many years ago – and an overabundance of clues, none of them are adding up to the same answer. With the sensitive detective in visible mental anguish over all the discrepancies, can even he figure out this murder on the Orient Express?
As the saying goes, when it comes to old school, apparently there’s no school like it and that certainly seems to be the road that Branagh is travelling along here as Murder On The Orient Express seemingly prides itself by being reassuringly old fashioned. Oh sure, it has a new, snazzy, polished coat of paint, of course as the sight of the titular train coursing through the countryside is rendered in lush, sparkly, CGI – but the heart that beats within the chest of the umpteenth adaptation of arguably Christie’s most famous puzzle isn’t really that different from past versions that starred such actors as Albert Finney and David Suchet as the eponymous detective.
The main thrust of the story (and certainly the denouement) are still very much the same and Branagh even plays that always welcome card of stuffing the list of suspects to bursting with A-list names aplenty. So joining Branagh as he (naturally) fills the choice role of Poirot himself is a laundry list of famous faces such as – deep breath – Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Josh Gad, Penelope Cruz, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr. and Olivia Coleman, all who, thanks to the fact that the gathered ensemble means they don’t have to carry this thing alone, look like they’re having tremendous fun.
In fact, part of the fun of the film is watching the director politely separating each cast member and convincing them to drop another convoluted jigsaw puzzle after some urging. Some, of course, stand out more than others (Coleman somehow barely registers while Depp’s doomed bastard seems much like the actor is once again playing dress up), but that’s the magic of the ensemble, isn’t it – the freedom to cast major players like Cruz, Dafoe and Pfeiffer as a devoutly religious missionary, a suspicious Austrian scientist or a man hungry lush without them having to carry the load?
However, none of this would work if the casting of Poirot himself didn’t work and Branagh – seemingly in the mindset of if you want a job done right, do it yourself – proves to be the catalyst that really makes the express rattle down the tracks. Entering the film with remarkably voluminous facial hair that immediately dispels any lingering memories of Suchet’s petit lip duster, he tackles the role (and the accent) with an impressive balance of wit and empathy that delivers genuine emotion alone with some biting one-liners (after seeing the reluctant expression on the face of a bunk mate, he fires off the barbed zinger: “I am equally disappointed in you, this is nice.).
While it could be said that Branagh is travelling over ground that arguably is too familiar, the true proof in the pudding is with the climax that has to deliver its shocking secrets into the light. I suspected as it was going to be an uphill battle, especially as the only other version of Orient Express I had seen by that point was literally the final twenty minutes of the Albert Finney one where he finally spills more beans than a narcoleptic barista. And yet somehow, despite that fact that I already knew who was responsible for the heinous crime, I found myself completely caught up in the emotion of it all as Poirot has to try and not see the world in a black or white absolute as he spirals around to the alarming truth.
Is Murder On The Orient Express breaking any new ground, god no, in fact you could argue that it actually lays down some old ones as it wears its gloriously old fashioned influences proudly on its sleeve. But thanks to a curiously soothing tone (Murder? How relaxing!), a massively game cast and Branagh’s insanely endearing performance, this rebirth of Agatha Christie’s most famous wrong righter (sorry Marple) proves to be a herculean amount of fun.
Onward, to the Nile!
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