Murder on the Orient
Express
Blu-ray
Review by Kam Williams
Remake
of Agatha Christie's Classic Whodunit Comes to Home Video
First
published in 1936, Murder on the Orient Express revolved around the
most famous case handled by Inspector Hercule Poirot. Created by
Agatha Christie, the Belgian detective appeared in 33 of her novels,
as well as a play and over 50 short stories.
This
complex crime caper was first brought to the big screen by Sidney
Lumet in a fairly faithful adaptation co-starring Lauren Bacall, Sean
Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Sir John
Gielgud, Albert Finney and Jacqueline Bisset. Bergman won the last of
her three Oscars for her sterling performance as Greta Ohlsson, a
Swedish nurse.
Murder
on the Orient Express 2.0 was directed by five-time, Oscar-nominee
Kenneth Branagh who assembled a top-flight cast with an
equally-impressive pedigree. His A-List ensemble features Academy
Award-winners Judi Dench and Penelope Cruz, along with nominees
Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe and Johnny Depp.
Branagh
also stars as Poirot, sporting a world-class mustache while playing
the super sleuth with perfect aplomb. The visually-captivating
costume drama is perhaps more memorable for its breathtaking
panoramas than the deliberately-paced mystery which takes its sweet
time to be unraveled.
The
picture's point of departure is Jerusalem, which is where we find
Poirot paying homage at the Wailing Wall before boarding a slow boat
to Istanbul. There, he starts soaking in the sights until the
vacation is cut short by a telegram summoning him back to London
immediately.
With
the help of a fellow Belgian who happens to be a train company
executive (Tom Bateman), he secures a berth aboard the
lavishly-outfitted Orient Express for what he reasonably expected to
be an unremarkable three-day trip. However, he shifts into detective
mode when an American art dealer (Johnny Depp) dies soon after
expressing a fear of being killed.
As
Poirot digs deeper and deeper for clues, we gradually see that each
of the 13 passengers had a good reason to want the unsavory character
dead. Sure, everybody's a suspect, but which one's a murderer?
An
Agatha Christie classic whodunit solved the old-fashioned way... by
the extraordinary deductive reasoning of the legendary Hercule
Poirot!
Rated PG-13 for violence, ethnic slurs and mature themes
In English and French with subtitles
Running time: 114 minutes
Production Studio: Kinberg Genre / The Mark Gordon Company
Distributor: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Extras: Agatha Christie: An Intimate Portrait; Let’s Talk About Hercule Poirot; Unusual Suspects (Part One, Two and Three); The Art of Murder; All Aboard: filming Murder on the Orient Express; Music of Murder; deleted scenes (with and without commentary by Kenneth Branagh and Michael Green; director commentary by Kenneth Branagh and Michael Green; theatrical trailers; and a stills gallery.
To see a trailer for Murder on the Orient Express, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq4m3yAoW8E
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