Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

In my opinion 2017 was a great year in film with comedy films such as Despicable Me 3, and real life stories such as Dunkirk. However, my favourite film of last year was Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express. This murder mystery film based on one Agatha Christie’s 37 Hercule Poirot novels. Based on The Orient Express Hercule Poirot is called to solve a murder when his train gets stranded in the middle of Yugoslavia, was it the butler the chef the prices the count, the gangster or someone else altogether who committed this crime. This film has now been made four times Albert Finney in 1974, Peter Ustinov in 1991, David Suchet in 2010 and now this version.

Despite his wonderful acting I do not think that Kenneth Branagh can ever compare to the works of David Suchet, who was famously the only person to do every one of the Poirot books on film (of which I am a great fan). Despite this, after seeing the 1974 version of this work of fiction I would definitely say that Branagh made a much better film than the one containing Albert Finney. The 2017 film was much faster paced and action packed sticking much closer to the original storyline.

One problem with the film would be that Kenneth Branagh makes one repeated mistake in his portrayal of Hercule. According to Dame Agatha Christie’s literary works, Hercule Poirot was at this stage of his life suffering from the early stages of arthritis. Despite this, Kenneth Branagh’s film featured the protagonist running on several occasions. However, I suppose he simply wanted to cast himself into a good roll seeing as he was the director as well as a major actor in the film.

Overall I think this was a great film and would be suitable for all people over the age limit (12A) which I believe was very well placed as it did feature many images containing blood and when seen in cinemas was overly loud. This film was definitely worth the $55 Million budget.