BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

fresh prelude at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which springs the detective’s steel trap mind, and fleshes out bigotry and paranoia in the calm before the Second World War.

Poirot (Branagh) is on holiday in Turkey when he receives an urgent communication to return to London.

Good friend Bouc (Tom Bateman), who is director of business on the Orient Express, secures the wily Belgian a cabin next to slippery gangster Samuel Ratchett ( Johnny Depp).

“I would like to hire you to watch my back until I get somewhere safe,” growls the imperilled hoodlum. Poirot rejects the offer – “I do not like your face!” – and as the train chugs through the Dinaric Alps, a murderer strikes.

Suspects include Ratchett’s secretary Hector MacQueen ( Josh Gad), governess Mary Debenham (Daisy Ridley), former soldier Dr Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom Jr), attentionfamished widow Caroline Hubbard (Michelle Pfeiffer), Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Dame Judi Dench) and her maid Hildegarde Schmidt (Olivia Colman), and missionary Pilar Estravados (Penelope Cruz).

Murder On The Orient Express harks back to a bygone era of lavish period filmmaking. Branagh shoots inside a movable locomotive and four carriages, built from scratch to allow his camera to glide in seemingly impossible directions. By opening up the central location, the film sacrifices claustrophobia and tension at the altar of directorial brio.

The titular conundrum is elegantly bookmarked by a luxurious tracking shot along the platform in Istanbul, which follows the Belgian detective as he wanders through the train, and a five-minute Steadicam shot inside the carriages as a morally conflicted Poirot prepares to disembark.

Branagh sports impressive facial hair and teases out his protagonist’s inner turmoil, while co-stars perfect inscrutable glares as they pull the wool over our eyes.

“Vice is where the Devil finds his darlings,” sermonises one character.

Satan has plenty of impeccably coiffed fallen angels to choose from here.