murder on the orient express 2017 movie review

Ona certain level, you can’t help but wonder how yet another production of Murder On The Orient Express even exists in 2017.It’s not as if audiences have been begging for more Agatha Christie Murderon the Orient Express (2017) Movie Review December 12, 2017 Steve Baqqi I have never read a single Agatha Christie book, nor could I recall having seen a single movie or T.V. show based on her work until I started doing supplementary research on this movie (call me unenlightened). MovieReview: Murder on the Orient Express Kenneth Branagh and Daisy Ridley in a very talky take on an Agatha Christie detective classic. Kurt Loder | 11.10.2017 12:01 AM Setin 1934, Murder on the Orient Express is an old-fashioned whodunit. As such, it takes its good old time in unraveling the central mystery. Although there's little action, Branagh-- who also directed -- keeps the story humming along with lush, exquisite visuals (the film was shot in widescreen 65mm); long, mesmerizing tracking shots; and crackerjack performances from Review] Murder On The Orient Express (2017) (movieweb.com) Sesuai judulnya, tentu saja ada pembunuhan yang terjadi dalam kereta Orient Express yang terhalang timbunan salju. Korban, Ratchett (Johnny Depp), tewas dengan tikaman berkali-kali di seluruh tubuh. Detektif Poirot di film adalah seorang Belgia yang sopan dan elegan tapi narsis dan Site De Rencontre Pour Femme Cherche Femme. On a certain level, you can’t help but wonder how yet another production of Murder On The Orient Express even exists in 2017. It’s not as if audiences have been begging for more Agatha Christie content in recent years or that there’s suddenly been a massive revival in drawing room mysteries to explain why a studio would want to make a blockbuster version of Christie potboiler. It likely exists as a big expensive Kenneth Branagh ego trip, surrounded by a bunch of famous friends as cover. This thing shouldn’t have made it through the studio system at all, especially as a grand and expensive studio release. Johnny Depp in Murder on the Orient Express 2017 – image via 21st Century Fox Yet on another level, it kind of makes sense. After all, many moons ago the paperback murder mysteries that Christie specialized in had a similar level of cultural cache and success as comic books. Plus, this famous property is also technically part of a larger franchise linked by Christie’s super detective Hercule Poirot. Fox likely looked at the star-packed project and saw the potential for a blockbuster franchise with just enough period prestige to qualify as awards bait and bring in a bundle from older audiences. Sure, there’s a certain desperation involved to stretch Agatha Christie into a potential repeatable Hollywood franchise. But hey! Maybe it could work. Well, sadly, that seems unlikely when you actually shove Branagh’s big safe gamble into your eyeholes. That’s not to say that Murder on the Orient Express is a particularly bad movie—because it’s not. It’s fine. It’s perfectly decent and totally watchable. It’s just not particularly exciting despite all the famous faces and blockbuster razzmatazz. There’s very little here that didn’t work better in the 1974 cinematic adaptation of this story and not only will viewers who remember that version likely shrug off the new one, but the creaky old conventions in play are unlikely to bring in many new viewers. Sure, murder and intrigue and famous and big ol’ set pieces all pop up in the flick on the regular, just in ways that feel awkwardly out of date and forced into contemporary mainstream filmmaking styles at once. Kenneth Branagh and Daisy Ridley in Murder on the Orient Express 2017 – image via 21st Century Fox At the centre of it all is Kenneth Branagh, not just over-directing the hell out of the movie so that every camera angle is a canted show off shot filled with unnecessary CGI effects to needlessly expand the scale, but also overacting as a Belgian super detective who is a cross between a less funny Inspector Clouseau and a less exciting Sherlock Holmes. The guy goes big as both director and actor, chewing scenery and whipping the camera around like a Michael Bay oddly obsessed with gentle early 20th century mysteries. It can get a bit overbearing, but it’s also frequently fun. There are few blockbuster specialists in history as unexpected as Branagh and he’s gotten good at what he does. Sure the focus is middlebrow and dated, but that’s to be expected from the Branagh at this point. Mugging overacting isn’t always a given with the guy, but that’s fine. After all, he’s got a hell of a cast to try and overshadow at the centre. Indeed, there’s virtually no one in this sprawling list of murder suspects who isn’t super famous or at least instantly recognizable. The big name is Johnny Depp, playing a dastardly jerk pretty much destined to be murdered from the second he opens his mouth and spits out a vulgar old timey criminal accent in a distinctly British tale. After Depp’s role is reduced to a bloody corpse, it’s up to the likes of Judi Dench, Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Josh Gad, Penelope Cruz, and Michelle Pfeiffer to act super suspicious as Branagh runs through the suspects. Some of the performers are wasted, some are overused, some are awkwardly out of place, and exactly one of them shines brightly. That’d be Michelle Pfeiffer, who does so much with so little you can’t help but hope that she’s primed for a comeback. Other than that, it’s fun to see these famous faces do shifty-eyed acting. But ultimately, this type of mystery writing and characterization has been around for so long that little of it surprises. The story is still well told and lands on a pretty great solution to all the parlour games, but it ultimately feels old fashioned rather than nostalgic. The type of story best suited to BBC broadcast, no many how many famous faces, special effects, and show-off camera moves Branagh lavishes all over the material. Judi Dench and Olivia Colman in Murder on the Orient Express 2017 – image via 21st Century Fox That’s ultimately the biggest problem with Murder On The Orient Express; we’ve been here before and enough times that there’s little need to do it again. Sure, it’s kind of fun to watch a clearly amused Kenneth Branagh get to play with one of the most expensive train sets ever constructed while sharing the stage with a bunch of famous friends. It’s just also a bit rich to think that Branagh and the studio seem so cockily convinced that they can stretch this thing into a blockbuster franchise for grownups. This is a passable bit of light entertainment, but hardly something worthy of a multi-year and film investment. Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely enough people will show up for this stagey bit of faux blockbusterdom to imagine it all leading to an Agatha Christie Cinematic Universe. It’ll likely be a quickly dismissed and forgotten experiment. But hey, at least Branagh and a bunch of his famous friends had a bunch of fun making a movie, right? Sure, it would have been better if audiences had even half as much fun watching the results. But hey, you can’t have everything, right? The director and star Kenneth Branagh’s remake looks great but feels utterly Branagh in Murder on the Orient Express 20th Century FoxIn cinema, as elsewhere, there can be too much of a good thing. Quick Do you remember the film several years back that starred Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, and Nicole Kidman, among others? If you recall that it was Nine, the director Rob Marshall’s musical follow-up to his Academy Award–winning Chicago, well good on you. I can scarcely summon any memory of the film ReadingThe director Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Murder on the Orient Express labors under the same delusion that cinematic quality is arithmetical Dench and Cruz are both here again, as are Branagh himself, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, and God knows how many others who are currently skipping my mind. If movies truly were math, this would be a they aren’t, and it’s not. Branagh’s retelling of the classic Agatha Christie tale is visually sumptuous yet otherwise inert, a series of what are essentially cameos by performers far too gifted to waste their time like this. There should be a law against casting Judi Dench in a film and then giving her virtually nothing to plot is familiar, even to those who have neither read the novel nor seen Sidney Lumet’s famous 1974 adaptation starring Albert Finney The year is 1935, and 13 apparent strangers are sharing a carriage on a train from Istanbul to Calais. One of them is murdered in his cabin with a dozen stab wounds, and the rest are trapped on the train by a snowdrift that has blocked the tracks. Who among them is the killer? Fortunately, among them is also Hercule Poirot Branagh, and he will solve the mystery because that is what he movie opens with an introductory scene in which Poirot is called upon to solve a mystery involving a priest, a rabbi, an imam—yes, the requisite “walk into a bar” joke is made—and the theft of a sacred relic. In the process, we are introduced to the idea of Hercule Poirot, inveterate perfectionist He carefully measures his two boiled eggs to ensure they are the same size; having stepped in a dung patty with one foot, he carefully places the other foot in it as well to preserve “balance” in the philosophical rather than ambulatory sense. Asked how it is he is able to deduce even the most hidden truths, he replies, “I can only see the world as it should be. And when it is not, imperfection stands out like the nose on a face.”The film is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel, and some of its variations are improvements. Two characters—a doctor and a soldier—are usefully melded into one, and a secondary stabbing is introduced to good effect. Other alterations, alas, seem more like concessions to the temper of the times a chase through the trestles of an alpine bridge; a fight and gunshot wound; a pointless backstory about Poirot’s lost love; and an extended bout of moral handwringing once the mystery has been the most dispiriting way in which the film diverges from its source material is in the person of Poirot himself. Christie’s Poirot was a somewhat comical figure, a short man five-foot-four, to be precise with a head “exactly the shape of an egg,” and a meticulously waxed mustache that curved up into two points. Branagh’s Poirot keeps the mustache—indeed, pushes it beyond absurdity, now curling up into six points—but otherwise he looks pretty much like movie-star Kenneth Branagh. He’s adopted the habit, a la Sherlock Holmes, of wowing strangers by intuiting their origins and professions on the basis of minute physical details. And, also like Holmes, he’s become adept at physical flatly heroic portrayal of Christie’s odd little Belgian detective might be less annoying if it didn’t smack of directorial vanity on Branagh’s part. So, too, might the fact that Branagh accords himself more screen time than all his illustrious costars combined. This latter defect would arguably be hard to avoid Finney, too, dominated the all-star cast of the 1974 version, even if Ingrid Bergman walked away with a thoroughly unearned Oscar for supporting actress. Is this unfair to Branagh? Perhaps. But it is the tightrope to be walked in self-directed star turns in movies that aim to be on the Orient Express is not a bad movie per se, merely one that feels self-indulgent and thoroughly unnecessary. Or perhaps it’s just me I can only see the movie as it should have been. And when it’s not, its imperfections stick out like the nose above a six-point mustache.

murder on the orient express 2017 movie review