Murder on the Orient Express a lackluster character study

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express. Image courtesy 20th Century Fox.

Murder on the Orient Express is a pretty adequate movie. It boasts a lovely (albeit underutilized) supporting cast, good imagery, and an ending that, more than 80 years after Agatha Christie wrote it in the book of the same name, remains brilliant. But on the whole, the movie is just adequate, which is a low bar to achieve for a film based on such a nuanced, immersive story. Director Kenneth Branagh and writer Michael Green definitely aim for greater than adequate, but their interpretation of the source material misses on several important aspects that the best this film can achieve is adequacy, heavily disappointing adequacy.

Branagh and Green bank a lot on the cachet of Murder on the Orient Express protagonist and world's greatest detective Hercule Poirot, betting the famous fictional Belgian with the established mustache could carry what is, at heart, an ensemble piece. Ego drives the decision quite a bit – Branagh himself dons the detective’s legendary (and ridiculous) mustache and a wavering accent – but from a distance the logic is there to support that decision. The mind of a genius is interesting to observe, to learn more about what drives such brilliance and how a mind as brilliant as Poirot's processes a complicated case and finds the truth amid a collection of lies. Branagh and Green instead effectively portray him as Sherlock Holmes combined with Tony Shalhoub's Monk (who is, again, based on Sherlock Holmes), and Poirot becomes a fussy, egotistical fellow with a nasty self-righteous streak. It's been done, and it's been done far better than what Branagh and Green have to offer. They scrub much of the character's sense of whimsy and create a sourpuss with an unclear devotion to a mysterious woman from his past. Which, again, has been done.

Fittingly enough, that lost love is mentioned fleetingly in a movie about Hercule Poirot. So too is Poirot's investigative process, which is clipped by the film's script. Key clues are conjured from thin air in Murder on the Orient Express, with the ones that could be caught by the audience sometimes ignored in exchange for some bit of background Poirot figures out away from the viewers. This is a cheap trick that murder mysteries have gotten away with for years, but the issue is less egregious in other formats because the stories focus on the mystery, not the detective. Switching the focus back over to the detective, as Branagh and Green do, both makes those cheats more pronounced and frustrating, and reduces a lot of vital character development. If the movie is about Poirot, the steps Poirot takes to solve the eponymous crime need to be outlined, not worked around.

Swept aside by all the love for Poirot is a pretty deep supporting cast and the characters they portray. Keeping the movie under two hours (although it feels much longer than that) restricts the screen time for talented performers like Penelope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom Jr., Derek Jacobi. Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, and Willem Dafoe, all of whom could do wonders with their roles as the murder suspects and the victim. Aside from Pfeiffer getting her (possible) Oscar moment toward the end and Odom Jr. and Ridley stepping up for a few moments, the supporting case otherwise blends in together, stuck waiting for Poirot to got talk to them. Poirot is better served as an audience surrogate to learn about the passengers on the train, not as the center of attention.

Murder on the Orient Express replaces much of its character development with an overarching sense of despair. This Hercule Poirot is kind of emo, haunted by a mysterious past and tired of his own greatness at solving crimes. The pursuit of knowledge, the intellectual curiosity of discovering the motives and method of an impossible murder, mean little to this version of Poirot. He's out for a very black and white version of justice that doesn't necessarily fit a character who otherwise lives in the grey area of life. Even the actions around the murder are portrayed with a great level of heft and severity, the stakes raised to add some drama to what, ideally, is a fun little murder mystery. Instead, Green and Branagh went for gritty in a genre that works best as either noir or as a sort of popcorn movie where the audience tries to figure out who did the deed. Ideally a movie like Murder on the Orient Express would be more joyful than stern, the darkness of the murder lightened by the cast and the quirks of Poirot's investigative method. What’s offered instead is the token gritty reboot, which are a dime a dozen these days.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 114 minutes

Genre: Mystery

Ask Away

Target audience: People who've either read Murder on the Orient Express and any of Agatha Christie's other novels with Hercule Poirot, have watched one of the previous adaptations, or like Kenneth Branagh movies.

Take the whole family?: Keep it around the PG-13 rating, especially given how uninteresting the content would be for younger viewers.

Theater or Netflix?: Netflix is better.

Does this movie have issues with racism?: It does cross a few lines that it can't talk its way out of. The language is a problem despite the era the film is set in, but what doesn’t pass the thin “it was a different time” excuse is an action taken by Leslie Odom Jr.'s character late in the movie that falls back on a trope about African-Americans and violence. The moment is unnecessary for both the character – other versions have shown that character's temper in less overt ways – and the movie itself.

Watch this instead?: The 1974 Murder on the Orient Express is a classic with a much lighter touch than this version. Also worth a look is Murder by Death, a delirious parody of murder mysteries featuring Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, David Niven, Eileen Brennan, Maggie Smith, and, randomly enough, Truman Capote

Dunkirk a lean, intense war movie

Soldiers contemplate their fates in Dunkirk. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

The sound of a ticking clock comes out and in throughout Dunkirk. The clock never strikes, but the sound persists as the body count grows and the odds of surviving the titular French town shrink hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. Ticking down closer and closer until a few minutes before the movie ends at an unexpected moment. It indicates the terror and mayhem the characters have survived has come to an end, at least for the moment.

The ticking clock is difficult to ignore because of how it hangs over the fates of Dunkirk's characters. This is a movie in which every character is at risk of drowning or getting taken out by a few random potshots or even getting caught in friendly fire, as is the case with what amounts to the movie's main character, a lowly private named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead). He's not the prototypical lead for a war movie, more fragile and reedy than the square-built stars the genre is built upon. Yet he does make a lot of sense for this movie, his actions to survive the carnage around him indicative of the mindset of the soldiers at the time. It's difficult to fault a guy like Tommy for cheating his way to safety amid a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as the friends he meets in his encounters begin to die gruesome, PG-13 deaths. The clock ticks on though in a fittingly unnerving fashion as Tommy's chances of survival shrink accordingly. It is the advantage of having someone as average as Tommy be the center of attention; the fact that he's not particularly notable means he's just as likely to end up in the bottom of the sea or with a few bullets around him as the other soldiers.

Even as time ticks away and the fear and the body count rise, the story of Dunkirk qualifies as a feel-good story. In the hands of many directors and writers it would be just that, focusing on the strength and vigor and how indomitable the English spirit truly is. Writer/director Christopher Nolan indulges in that a little toward the end, but he never loses sight of the dangers the troops faced in the hours, days, minutes before the evacuation finished. The clock, courtesy of Hans Zimmer's score, ticks down, down, down as the many paths to safety and salvation are blown up in the faces of the broken soldiers. Hope is always around the corner in Dunkirk, but it becomes more and more difficult to see and harder and harder to believe in.

A lot happens in Dunkirk in a remarkably short amount of time. This is an amazingly lean World War II movie, with a run time of less than two hours and with the dialog is sparse and the bloodshed on screen is minimal. There are a lot of bodies though, the corpses of soldiers floating in the ocean off the coast of France not too far away from home or becoming engulfed in flame after a well-targeted German torpedo. The blood isn't necessary to convey the atrocities of the situation; showing the faces of the thousands of soldiers stuck on a beach surrounded by Germans is more than adequate to express the horrors of the situation. Nolan just doesn't require the bloat of a traditional war movie to tell his story effectively, doesn't require a traditional star studded cast (Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh, and, randomly enough, Harry Styles are the most famous names in this movie) to get the point across. Even the action sequences – excellently staged and wildly effective – are quick and efficient, with any elements of CGI blending seamlessly with the live action. Nolan doesn't need a lot to make a great war movie; engaging action and a ticking clock will more than suffice.

It's all horribly effective, a thriller/horror movie masking as a war movie to sneak up on the audience and keep them lost in the action. Nolan throws in a non-linear story to aid in that little trick of deception, leading viewers down one story path while jumping back in time to events that happen in another before all the players converge at the end. The result is a dizzying experience, with the ticking clock the only thing keeping the stories tethered for a long period of time. That the sounds of fate represent the closest thing to comfort viewers have while watching Dunkirk reflects how horrifying this movie is, as well as how effective Nolan is at manipulating viewers. They, like the soldiers, are never in control.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 106 minutes

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: People who like World War II movies and/or Christopher Nolan.

Take the whole family?: It's going to scare the heck out of kids, so stick around the recommended age rating.

Theater or Netflix?: Theater is a good option for this. The IMAX experience even proved to be a worthwhile addition to the viewing experience.

Is this a new shift for Christopher Nolan?: Not really. His last few movies have been big box office movies with star power and loaded with special effects, but his roots are in these small, atmospheric movies. Movies like Insomnia and Memento put their emphasis on mood and intensity, maintaining a certain level of confusion and allowing a sense of fatalism to guide the action. Dunkirk blends the big budget flicks with those smaller movies, putting it right on par with The Prestige.

Watch this as well?: Saving Private Ryan has less intensity but a greater amount of brutality than Dunkirk. Mixing the two provides a pretty solid look at the horrors of war.