Murder on the Orient Express

I love the old version with Albert Finney, but the new one by Kenneth Branagh certainly doesn't disgrace it. However, the director and the main actor in one person decided – quite logically and, I think, rightly – not to try to make any fundamental statement against it or the source material. So although the trailers try to suggest that we're going to see some brisker pacing and maybe even some action, it's still the right kind of Poirot dialogue. And just like the film's classics, it stands on its excellent cast, great performances, dialogue and of course how perfectly thought out the whole thing is. Branagh treats the book with reverence, but at the same time doesn't shy away from a more modern and clever use of cinematography and excellent music work. And the result is the most honest whodunit I could have imagined given the source material. It goes exactly as it should. (07/27/2018)

I confess to being a big fan of Agatha Christie and David Suchet's Poirot, so as hard as I tried, I couldn't get past this modern take, where Poirot runs, fights, gets shot at (and hit), steps in dung and then steps in it on purpose again, investigating in a truly un-Poirot-like way. And so on and so forth. This is simply not Hercule Poirot. If they'd just taken inspiration from the prequel and called the detective, say, Jarda Vomáčka, it would have been fine and it would probably have been easier to digest this new Poirot, but nope. Besides, even though it had such a beautiful cast, the acting came across so stilted that I didn't really have anyone to focus on and I was bored for most of the film (except for the scenes where Poirot was deviating from his Poirotness, because I was getting angry and the classic fan in me was fighting it). I admit the visuals were beautiful, but that was the end of it. Definitely a full-on disappointment for me. (02/11/2018)

Overwrought and overly lavish crime drama in the hands of a first-class connoisseur, aesthete, pedant and lover of classic literary subjects all in one. That it doesn’t work very well as a whole? That is true and that is what it looks like. Not that Branagh isn't good in front of the camera, on the contrary, he is the best of the lot, but he is also the only watchable thing, unless you count the impressive camera sequences of Istanbul and the mountain heights, but you can put on Discovery Channel for that, and you will spare yourself the disappointment of unfulfilled expectations of a quality and solid detective story. (02/15/2018)

"Murder on the Orient Express" is one of Agatha Christie's most celebrated Poirot stories and was first published in 1934. The Lindbergh baby case is also infamous, and its reach can be illustrated, for example, by the fact that in its time it also caused fear in Marlene Dietrich, who hired two bodyguards for her daughter. The trauma caused by the scandal was almost palpable throughout the 1930s... There have been a number of adaptations, whether in film, television, radio, theater, comics, or video games. So is it a good choice to start a new series? Isn't it a shame to start telling new Poirot cases in this notorious way? So far, Kenneth Branagh seems to have been lucky. Soon he will be back again and will surely solve another famous case - Death on the Nile. So what was the recipe used? Branagh was not afraid to make a classic all-star film for today's audience, where it is important that even the smallest roles are played by respected actors. It is all sufficiently idealized, deliberately playing with reverence and yet suspenseful and, where desired, funny. It is therefore an endeavor that can be enjoyed without hesitation. As an added bonus, we get a new song sung by Michelle Pfeiffer - "Never Forget." (05/22/2018)

Branagh, after failed experiments with big-budget filmmaking (Jack Ryan, Thor), has managed to find the right chessboard in which he can dabble as a filmmaker, even with his theatrical sensibilities. The stage of four train cars is an ideal setting for him, he can play around with popular formal elements of the theater and still use all the possibilities of cinematic language. You can see his joy in this, the reveling in the various minute details, the blocking, and above all the movement through the scene, where we can either be fooled or collect clues just by working within the film frame. It's true that the film can never match the wildly overpopulated opening in Istanbul, in which one character after another arrives in the crowded streets of a wonderfully hectic big city, but then again there is a place for quiet admiration of the ingenious work with space, in which long, refined shots do their best not to repeat any previous steps. It's a reminiscence of the most classic filmmaking with the most contemporary of means, it's a beauty, and again after a long time a film where there was a storm raging outside, the cinema was leaking, the projection was a little askew, but I sat back, untroubled, waiting to see how the whodunit gets revealed, and wanted for nothing. (02/12/2018)