Movie Review: Murder on the Orient Express

3 stars out of 5

Mystery confessions: I never read an Agatha Christie novel, or watched a movie or TV adaptation. Same for Sherlock Holmes. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever played Clue.

Still, I’m kinda drawn to this stuff. And when I saw a trailer with Johnny Depp and a bunch of other famous people and Kenneth Branagh with a crazy mustache and they’re all on a train — I really like trains! — I decided to check it out.

As we meet Branagh’s famed detective Hercule Poirot in Jerusalem, the mood is very light. I half-expected Steve Martin to show up as Inspector Clouseau. Soon we’re aboard the Orient Express. Poirot has to share a room because the train is completely sold out, despite the fact there are only about 10 passengers aboard. (I guess it would’ve been less dramatic in a minivan.) Branagh is also the director, and gives us some cool shots of the train going through snowy mountainous regions at night.

Johnny Depp is a tough-guy American who may not be revealing everything about himself. He confides to Poirot that he is fearful for his life. Poirot refuses to investigate and shame on him, because Depp knew what he was talking about. Spoiler alert: He is murdered on the Orient Express!

Oh, now Poirot wants to investigate. Well, everybody aboard had some possible motive — Dame Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer (confident and sexy once again in 2017!), Sophie from Peep Show, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Daisy “Last Jedi” Ridley, Josh Gad, etc. (You see Gad and think, hmm, someone more prominent must have dropped out of filming at the last minute.) But which of these people actually committed the crime? Or, in a grammatically troubling contraction, whodunnit?

Now, this is totally boilerplate stuff. The thing is, Christie is one of the inventors of the boilerplate, so we’ll give her a pass. But watching as a modern viewer, it’s a bit ridiculous, isn’t it? (“Ah, but wait, you’re the countess’s 3rd cousin twice removed, aren’t you?”) The mood gets much more serious in the movie’s second half. There’s an annoying somber musical motif by Patrick Doyle (?) that repeats over and over again. Doyle is also responsible for the music in a lousy song that plays over the end credits, with lyrics by Branagh (!) and crummy vocals by Pfeiffer.

Honestly, I don’t know what they could’ve done to improve things overall. If they modernized the story, it would’ve required too many wholesale changes, and that would upset the Christie faithful. All I know is, when the high point of action is Kenneth Branagh chasing Josh Gad, you’ve got big problems with your movie.