One of the big movies of the season opening today is a new version of Agatha Christie's classic mystery thriller, "Murder On The Orient Express". This version was was directed by and stars Kenneth Branagh as detective Hercule Poirot.
Before getting into the subject of remakes, let me concentrate on this movie. As indicated in the title, there will be no spoilers.
The story, and there may be some of you out there who are not familiar is this: Poirot finds himself boarding, at the last minute, the Istanbul-to-Calais Orient Express for a three day train ride across Europe. Because of the last minute nature of his boarding, he is squeezed in among an assortment of passengers all brought together, seemingly at random, for this particular train ride. During the second night of the trip two things occur. An avalanche takes place and stalls the train in the somewhere middle of the Balkans, and one of the passengers is brutally murdered. A railroad official implores Poirot to investigate and solve this mystery before the tracks are cleared so that the police officials can be presented both a victim and a perpetrator. The killer had to be someone on the Calais Coach, but who among them could have wanted this guy, Mr. Ratchett, dead?
Such is the tale of one of Christie's most renowned novels, and Branagh tells the story in a stylish and very entertaining manner. I'm not going to say any more about the mystery and its solution. See the movie yourself and enjoy it.
Like the Sidney Lumet version of the story from 1974, this one has the requisite all-star cast that includes in addition to Branagh, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Josh Gad, Leslie Odom, Jr., Willem Dafoe and others. Going in, I wasn't sure that I was going to like Branagh as Poirot, but he was quite good as it turned out. Also good in their roles were Depp (is he ever not good?) and Pfeiffer. The movie is also beautifully filmed and gorgeous to look at. A very entertaining hour and fifty-four minutes, and it gets a solid Three Stars from The Grandstander.
Now, when I checked in on Facebook that I was seeing this movie today, I got a number of comments along the lines of "I saw the Albert Finney version in 1974, so I'm not going to bother with this one" or "Why bother remaking this one" or "Why should I see this one when I saw the other one. Isn't it the same story?"
The subject of remakes is one that I have written about before
and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. In the case of MOTOE, I had read that the Agatha Christie estate was in full support of the making of this movie because it might expose new generations of readers to Christie's works, generations of moviegoers and readers who would have no inclination to look up and watch a forty year old movie. Fair enough.
I grant you that a lot of remakes have been ill-advised and just plain bad (see what I had to say about that in the post linked above), but some of them can be quite good and can stand on their on merits alongside and even improve upon the originals. As far as "Murder On The Orient Express" is concerned, I can say that I liked both this one and Lumet's 1974 version equally. It's a good story, and the studios and the film makers did not skimp in making sure that they gave the public a quality production. And isn't conversations of who was better, Albert Finney or Kenneth Branagh, Lauren Bacall or Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Widmark or Johnny Depp, Ingrid Bergman or Penelope Cruz (for the record, I'll vote for Branagh, Depp and Bergman and call it a draw between Bacall and Pfeiffer) all part of the fun, kind of like arguing about Willie, Mickey, and The Duke?
Movie goers can decide how they want to spend their money, of course, but I hope that you not rule this version of "Murder On The Orient Express" out simply because you saw the same story done forty-three years ago. That was a good movie, but so is this one.
Oh, true Christie-philes will have noted that the door was left open just a crack at the end of this one for additional Branagh-as-Poirot films. Not sure if that is what Branagh wants, but the opportunity is certainly there.
Again, Three Stars from The Grandstander.
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