On the premier date of this movie which I had been aiming to see since I saw its theatrical poster few weeks ago, my wife and I decided to see it in Plaza Indonesia mall (PI). It was not our usual place to see a movie, but I was having a Cinema XXI voucher from my credit card which can be used only in few theaters (PI was one of them), plus my wife had a meeting in Grand Indonesia that was very near the mall. So without further ado, let us get on with the movie.
Brief Story Line
Story was set in the year 1934, where the very famous detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh - Henry V, Dunkirk etc) had to take the Orient Express train from Istanbul to London for an urgent case. Due to the last minute requirement, the Orient Express director named Bouc (Tom Bateman) had to put Poirot in a normal carriage together with other passengers instead of the usual first class carriage. He met with various people in the train such as the American woman who was previously married more than once named Mrs. Hubbard (Michelle Pfeiffer - What Lies Beneath, The Fabulous Baker Boys and many more) and seemed to be looking for her future husband. In this carriage, Poirot and the rest of the passengers were served by Pierre Michel (Marwan Kenzari).
Poirot also met with Mr. Ratchett (Johnny Depp - Edward Scissorshands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc) an American shady businessman who tried to enlist Poirot's help. Ratchett had an assistant/secretary named MacQueen (Josh Gad - Beauty and the Beast, Frozen etc) and personal butler named Masterman (Derek Jacobi - The King's Speech, Stratton etc). While having breakfast on the first day, Poirot met with the rest of the passengers in this carriage.
He saw a Russian lady named Princess Dragomiroff (Judi Dench - Pride and Prejudice, Casino Royale etc) who was accompanied by her German maid Schmidt (Olivia Colman - Hot Fuzz, The Iron Lady etc). There were also a professor named Hardman (Willem Dafoe - The Hunter, The Great Wall etc) who wanted to go to Turin to give lecture, a missionary named Pilar Estravados (Penélope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Nine etc), a young teacher named Mary Debenham (Daisy Ridley - Star Wars: The Force Awakens), a doctor named Arbuthnot (Leslie Odom Jr), a Latin American carshop owner named Marquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo - The Magnificent Seven, From Dusk Till Dawn TV series etc) and a Yugoslavian couple Count Rudolph Andrenyi (Sergei Polunin) with his wife Countess Andrenyi (Lucy Boynton).
During the trip, there was a murder on one of the passengers and Poirot had to find out who the murderer before the train reached the next stop.
End of Brief Story Line
My wife and I are major fans of Agatha Christie's novels and we even have a complete set of all her novels (in Bahasa Indonesia). Both of us have read all the novels at least once from our youth days. However, as time goes on, we have honestly forgotten the culprit in every case and this one was no exception. During the course of the movie, we were kept guessing, but gradually we could remember the murderer (though not the details).
From my personal point of view, this movie was quite good in term of portraying Hercule Poirot. I could imagine the real Poirot would be like this one in term of his accent, his perfectionist nature and the interviewing style. However, the physical appearance (apart from the huge mustache) was a bit different from what I pictured (Poirot was supposed to be a little guy with the head shaped like an egg), but Kenneth Branagh was a rather large guy with an almost square jaw. I think the closest one in term of appearance would still be David Suchet who portrayed Poirot in the British TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot.
The movie's pace was understandably slow as it was a murder mystery story to be solved. Those who have read Agatha Christie's novels would know that her story would always resolved around the introduction of the characters through the brief background story or through the investigations. That is why the movie would not have action sequences and the investigations were done mostly through Poirot's unique method of solving cases. The main attraction of this movie no doubt was the star studded cast which included multiple award nominees and winners such as Branagh himself (who also directed the movie), Pfeiffer, Dench, Depp, or Dafoe. The settings of 1930s were done pretty well to my opinion.
In addition to the wonderful acting, I also found that there were brief scenes where it was quite uniquely shown, i.e. the scene from the top while Poirot was going through the compartment of the deceased victim. And the sound effect was surprisingly good for this kind of movie as it was having a Dolby Atmos sound system. Oh during the end credit scene, there was a song that was sung beautifully by Michelle Pfeiffer (my wife was able to recognize her voice. Amazing, right?). The movie also had some brief fun moments involving Poirot's uniqueness.
Finally if you are a fan of Agatha Christie's novels especially Hercule Poirot, I think you would be entertained by this. Those who never read her books, might also be entertained by the movie while guessing who the murderer was. But if you are a hard core fan, there might always be some flaws that could be found. My recommendation would be to just go see this movie and enjoy this one as a nice adaptation of the novel. Good news also if you like this movie, as there was a hint of a sequel which made my wife and I quite excited at the prospects of seeing more Poirot cases in the theaters. If you are not a fan of slow paced type of mystery solving drama, and prefer more on action style movie, then this definitely would not appeal to you. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Additional Note:
This is the fourth time the novel was adapted. First one was in 1974 where it was nominated for several Academy Awards. The second one was in 2001 as a TV movie and the third one in one of the TV series.
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