Review: Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (12A)

USA/UK 2017  114 mins  Dir: Kenneth Branagh  Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Olivia Colman

Rather like being gently submerged in a warm, relaxing bath, Kenneth Branagh’s sumptuous romp through period Christieworld’s winter wonderland delivers a comfortingly familiar story that serves up an all-star cast of suspects before self-regarding Hercule Poirot unmasks the usual guilty parties. Those craving novelty or unexpected twists should seek their jollies elsewhere.

Branagh gifts himself the part of Poirot and pulls rank to get first go at the dressing-up box, where he seems to have found two extravagant moustaches. Seemingly unable to decide between them, he opts to wear these simultaneously in a richly layered arrangement of facial hair from which it is hard to avert one’s eyes. Having corralled his cast aboard the magnificent steam choo-choo, he sends them thundering from Istanbul to Paris through winter scenery that seems to have been nicked from Robert Zemeckis’s The Polar Express. That’s pretty appropriate given that these characters are every bit as two-dimensional as the rudimentary mo-cap ones who populated that 2004 Christmas fantasy. There’s a devious, randy widow (Pfeiffer), a rakish American gangster (Depp), a haughty European princess (Dench) and her long-suffering travelling companion (Colman), an arrogant and racist Austrian academic (Dafoe), a pious and disapproving god-botherer (Cruz), a bright young governess (Daisy Ridley from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, presumably cast for the benefit of any young ‘uns who might have wandered in by mistake), and so on. Then an avalanche strikes, leaving the train stranded precipitously atop a wooden bridge, and the murder is committed, prompting Poriot to deploy his legendary “little grey cells”.

There’s been a fair bit of sniffiness about Branagh’s adaptation. Most of this is unwarranted, since the problems stem from the source novel, with which screenwriter Michael Green (co-writer of Blade Runner 2049, fact fans) resists the urge to tinker overmuch. Chief among these is the vast and unwieldy cast of suspects, each of whom is necessarily afforded only a limited amount of screen time. Branagh seems to have recognised this by instructing his A-listers to maximise their impact with the broadest of brushstrokes while being careful not to tip over into nudge-winky parody. Fans of Johnny Depp are likely to feel most short-changed, while Judi Dench simply does her familiar icy and imperious routine. But, hey, that’s what she was hired for and she does it to perfection. Michelle Pfeiffer gets arguably the juiciest second-fiddle role, but Daisy Ridley also shines in this illustrious company as the whip-smart young woman whom Christie reportedly based on herself.

Branagh was never shy about stepping into Laurence Olivier’s shoes in his twenties, so taking on a character previously played by Peter Ustinov, Orson Welles and David Suchet is a comparative breeze. Sure, the whiskers do much of the heavy acting work, but he also brings a borderline OCD sensibility to Poirot while engaging in an entertaining battle of the funny accents with Willem Dafoe. Branagh the director, meanwhile, makes impressive use of his rather stagy set, sending his camera gliding through the carriages and sweeping above and below them, seemingly determined to explore every nook and cranny before it’s all feasted upon by the ravenous cast. In anticipation of audiences proving receptive to this cinematic comfort food, he also chucks in a cheeky coda that suggests his thesps may be packing their bags for Egypt before long.