SNORE-IENT EXPRESS
Whodunit remake barely leaves the station
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
Getaclue.
Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence and thematic elements). Now playing.
‘MURDER on the Orient Express” has been ... murdered! Which of you could have killed this cold and limp new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s whodunit, in which a wealthy criminal is offed on a luxury train and a famous detective attempts to solve the case?
Was it you, Kenneth Branagh, the film’s director? You have a history of starring in movies you also helm — like “Henry V” and “Hamlet” — and here you follow suit, playing world-renowned Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. You’ve conspicuously made your Poirot more debonair than any before, like a mustachioed maitre d’ version of James Bond. Where have you hidden his eccentricity? Stowed the weirdness? You make us long for the great Poirots played by Albert Finney and David Suchet.
I say to you, Mr. Branagh, that being an actor-director causes you to dangerously alternate between fixating on your own oversize performance and bizarrely moving the camera all over the place. You shoot some scenes from overhead, letting the audience only view the actors’ scalps for what feels like minutes. Perhaps, you’ve made a weapon of your narcissism, sir!
Which brings me to you, Lucy Bevan, the casting director. Did you, blindfolded, toss a stack of notable actors’ headshots into the air and pick 15 off the floor at random? Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Daisy Ridley, Johnny Depp, Leslie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer and their cohorts are undeniably accomplished performers. But thrown together, they are like oil and water — and this sedate movie is surely not shaking them up. The best is Dench, of course, but we have not gathered here to state the obvious.
And let us not forget Michael Green, the screenwriter. Did Mr. Green kill the movie with the typewriter in the library? Quite possibly. For, although Christie’s 1934 novel is scarcely 70 pages, it does not want for charm, wit and personality. Green’s adaptation, however, is thin and undistinguished. No character feels all that different from the next. You could call it deadly.
Then, I thought to myself, it can’t be all of you.
But, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve realized you are all guilty. You’ve willingly collaborated on a wholly misguided, dunderheaded adaptation of a beloved British classic and treated it like a throwaway, Season 18 episode of “Law & Order: SVU.” There is blood on all of your hands.
We have solved the case. My work here is done.