Really, there oughta be a law. It isn’t just the impossibly silly mustache, much worse is the wooden characterization, the constant frown, the laughable French – oops, Belgian accent, and worst of all the lack of any sense of fun, You might blame the last complaint on the writer or the director, but this is his movie and I’m sure it reflects exactly what he wants. He didn’t want just another fluffy Christie interlude, he wanted this story and this picture to be Important, dammit!
Full disclosure: this rant is based on viewing a 2+ minute preview of the film, but I have also seen his Murder on the Orient Express a couple of times on TV. Over-wrought doesn’t begin to cover it. Anyway, not gonna see it until it is free on TV, and even then only if there is nothing else on and I have nothing else to do.
One absolutely saving grace: Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French have the roles that Bette Davis and Maggie Smith had in the Peter Ustinov version from the 80’s. That could be absolutely delicious, if they are given enough to do. And then there’s Russell Brand (!) as the doctor. That’s a bit hard to picture.
I rather liked Murder on the Orient Express, too (and I have the 'stache to prove it), although it did depart a bit from convention. Usually, in a mystery movie, the mystery itself is the star. The audience is trying to figure out who done it, and the characters take a bit of a back seat to that. I kind of feel like Branagh expected everyone to know the ending to Murder, and made the movie more about Poirot as a character. I kind of wish he hadn’t directed it himself, so that he couldn’t be accused of making it a vanity project. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who saw it without knowing the ending, and whether it held up as a mystery.
Unfortunately, I also remember the ending to Death on the Nile.
While it was cinematically beautiful, IMHO it did come across as self-indulgent and hamhanded at several points. Branagh is certainly capable of excellent acting but many such actors need an independent voice telling them to dial it back, and he desperately needed it here. And that’s not even getting into the gratuitous Last Supper imagery he plopped in.
That would be me, and I think it did, yes. I enjoyed the film and didn’t think the characters overshadowed the mystery. But I’m far from a film connoisseur, so I likely wouldn’t notice any overacting until it got to full Jim Carrey.
I didn’t know the ending, and I almost solved it. I caught some of the clues, but I missed the big picture. I found it a servicable mystery.* I liked the characters, the imagery, the style. I liked Knives Out, too.
*If I could solve every mystery, I’m in the wrong line of work. It must be difficult to enjoy mystery movies if you’re Mr Monk or HP or Sherlock Holmes. Either you solve them right away (if they are “fair play” mysteries) or all you see are the plot holes.
It was twice, and neither time all the way from beginning to end. Nothing else on, nothing else to do. And for the record, I didn’t hate all of it, I mostly just hated Branagh. He is supposed to be a good actor, but his characterization of Poirot I found monotonous (literally, he used a single tone of voice throughout the movie, while everyone else was all over the place) and grim. And then suddenly at the end he changes and becomes more human. That was the worst, it felt like a betrayal of whatever character he had managed to show us up to then, and it was only there because the plot required it. Ham-handed and mechanical.
Understood, RF, and thanks. I must admit that, if I don’t see anything I like on TV, I pick up a book or noodle around on the Internet or go for a walk, but to each their own.
The trailer was enough to put me off the Branagh MOTOE (although my parents enjoyed it). I thought both the Albert Finney and David Suchet versions, although considerably different, were excellent.