Talkie Tuesday: Murder on the Orient Express

"I do not approve of murder."

Hello everyone!

First off, greetings from a VERY cold place. I swear, all that cold that seemed to have given the Koreans so much trouble during the Winter Olympics relocated up to Europe now. I can't remember the last time it's been this cold! 

Luckily, however, temperatures SHOULD rise by next week, though I doubt they'll go as high as mine did while I was watching the movie featured in tonight's blog post.

Many of you will know (or you're about to learn) that I am a devoted Agatha Christie fan. I have her entire book collection in the electronic version AND all of her Hercule Poirot-centered books in physical copies as well. Which does remind me that my padre needs to give me the books of hers he's hoarding so we can make one shelf of it.

Anyway.

As a fan, then, there's no way you can miss out on her most famous case involving Belgian detecive Monsieur Poirot. But while Murder on the Orient Express has the flare, it doesn't quite have the bang it might have wanted.

Allow me, firstly, to clear something up: I am a David Suchet fan. 

This primarily because I literally grew up watching him in the role of Hercule Poirot (and I do believe that I'm only missing a very small amount of DVDs from the series), not to mention the fact that it's a passion that my parents, my sister and I can share, and therefore we cultivate it because that's what families do.

Now, when I first saw the announcement that there would be a remake of Orient Express, I wasn't thrilled. Why mess with things? And as the casting news trickled out, I was less than impressed. The trailer didn't help my nervous feelings about this thing, either, and I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my sister about it (which includes, but is in no way limited to the fact that she didn't even realize Kenneth Branagh was Poirot and thought Johnny Depp was the detective) after which I shelved the idea of watching this.

But then this past Saturday, I ended up playing Settlers of Catan with my best friends, and it was mentioned that the movie is actually pretty good, with the footnote that I may not like it because of Branagh's Poirot.

Me: if it's only Poirot that's the problem? Challenge accepted!

(Future me: you're going to regret this statement ...)

Naturally, I then nabbed a copy, sat down, and hit the play button. I should also add that I went into this firmly pushing away any David Suchet melancholy. I would watch this as someone who'd read Christie's book. That was it.

The movie starts promisingly enough with Poirot on a different case, solving some sort of missing artefact situation. This mostly serves as a way to introduce audiences to the detective, and unfortunately within the next five minutes I realized that this entire film is pandering to people who have never read one book penned by Christie. That's the only way I can see someone going in, watching it, and managing not to cringe.

But moving on. Branagh saunters about in all his mustache-ioed glory and manages to convince us that Poirot's oddities all boil down to one thing: balance.

Me: I have Franz Joseph on line one, he wants to know when he can get his mustache back.

Also me: Poirot is an odious little man with an egg-shaped head and a huge mustache who is all about ORDER and METHOD. Balance? Sure, if it helps the first two. But he'd never be caught dead stepping into poop and then stepping into it AGAIN to even it out.

Anyway, after solving this case, Poirot is off to Istanbul via ferry, where he calmly enjoys himself pretending to be Sherlock Holmes with his deductions about Mary Debenham, erstwhile governess also en route to the big city (while another character, Dr. Arbuthnot, is herein merged from two book characters AND made in a dark skinned fellow). Here may I note, movie viewers, another eggregious error: Poirot travels in style, on a train. He literally ABHORS anything else, because every other method of travel causes pains in his estomach (his own words, not mine). Literally, if he's on a boat or on a plane or in a car, he'll most probably be sitting there uncomfortably and pretending not to exist.

Luckily for him, after he's done admiring pies at the hotel kitchen (say what now?), he runs into Monsieur Bouc, who just so happens to be the head of the train company that oversees the fabled Orient Express. As Poirot is being called back to England post-haste, he needs to leave ASAP, and I mean ASAP - so Bouc goes to secure him a compartment on said Orient Express. It shouldn't be a problem - it's the down season, middle of the week, winter.

Actually, there IS a problem: the Orient Express is booked.

But, as Poirot cheerfully informs Miss Debenham whom he sees on the platform, he'll probably get onto the train when Bouc wins the argument that he needs a bunk. Which is how Branagh eventually finds himself in the same compartment as Josh Gad who in this movie plays Hector MacQueen, secretary and general handyman to Johnny Depp's Ratchett character.

Other passengers include the previously-introduced Debenham (Ridley) and Dr. Arbuthnot (Odom Jr), British butler extraordinaire Masterman (Jacobi), Miss Estravados (Cruz), who I can't decide if she's a missionary or a professional female boxer, Professor Hardman (Dafoe) with an interesting German accent, Princess Dragomiroff (Dench), Mrs. Hubbard (Pfeiffer), a maid for the princess (I forgot her name), Count and Countess Andrenyi who both have their own problems to solve, the conductor Michel, and a dubious character Marquez who I'm pretty sure I missed the fuss about.

The group is off to travel through mainland Europe, but of course things won't really go as easily as that.

First, Poirot gets his own compartment after they relocate MacQueen. Then he seems obscenely amused with Charles Dickens (correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard a lot of commentary on Dickens, but I don't think anyone ever accused him of being funny in his writing), gets propositioned by Mrs. Hubbard, after which we see Branagh starting morosely at a photo of a young woman named Katherine, and then things come to a head when Ratchett asks Poirot to be his bodyguard on this trip.

Meanwhile I'm trying not to giggle morosely at the fact that Depp managed to squeeze his role of Mortdecai into Ratchett.

Poirot declines, and THEN shit gets real: some brilliant geographer figures there are Alps between the two towns they're travelling to and from (hint: ain't nothin' higher than hillocks there), and an avalanche derails the train's engine, leaving the rest of the train stuck over a weebly-wobbly looking bridge, and Poirot hears weird noises in the night (he also sees a lady running around in a red kimono, but by this point I suspect he thinks that Mrs. Hubbard is putting on another scene).

Unfortunately, come morning, Poirot discovers that Ratchett is dead, and in what has got to be the world's fastest post-mortem glance ever, the doctor explains he was stabbed a hell of a lot of times, with the murderer using the left and right hand, alternately.

Bouc makes the rather brilliant deduction that Poirot's little grey cells will eat themselves alive without stimulation, and while Branagh gets insulted about the insinuation that he sits and thinks things through, he ends up taking the case.

Me: well what do YOU think Poirot does for a living? Climb down chimneys and pretend he's Santa Claus?

Now it's time for the deductive part of the story, and my hopes that this already-bungled up movie would manage to untangle itself to get down to business properly were flattened pretty quickly.

Poirot dashes here, there, and everywhere, showing off some amazing physical prowess and somehow deducing things without really giving the audience much. I suspect the idea here was to portray him as god-like and as someone who has an answer where others don't, but what it actually achieved was to confuse me, since I didn't even have time to catch up with the man before he hopped off the top of the train (SERIOUSLY) and dashed any hopes Bouc (or I) had of helping him out in any way.

Also me: dude, what on this flat Earth were you doing on top of the train? Poriot doesn't like heights! Also ... top of the train. Enough said.

He dismisses most of the clues found with Ratchett's body (big mistake) and pulls theories out of thin air, which isn't exactly what Poirot does. Or, for that matter, Sherlock Holmes. The power of both these sleuths comes from their ability to observe that which others overlook and, in Poirot's case, to sniff out a lie better than a bloodhound.

But don't worry, to appease audiences who are trying desperately to keep up, there's some sexism and racism thrown in for good measure, a couple of fist-fights, and poor Josh Gad getting thrown right down from the bridge and somehow surviving that fall.

Me: since when are Hungarian counts secret ninjas? 
Also me: wait, his wife's a druggie, obviously he needs to fight off her inner demons with his amazing Bruce Lee skills.

Of course then Poirot finally starts making some good guesses (but it's only guesswork really, which is absurd) as the team dispatched from their destination arrives to dig them out; he figures out Ratchett was actually Cassetti, the notorious child-kidnapper who also kidnapped Daisy Armstrong, which led to a heartbreaking scenario: the parents paid the ransom, but Daisy was already dead, so her mother Sonia miscarried her second child, dying in the process, after which her husband shot himself.

The worst follows after, however, when no case was brought against Cassetti and an innocent French maid was locked up instead, hanging herself later.

Now all that remains is for Poirot to accuse passenger after passenger on te train as he interviews them (and conveniently forgets to ask all the important questions) as well as discover everyone is connected to the Armstrong case. He also gets himself shot for his efforts and tells the lot of them that they're going to have to shoot him so he doesn't tell the truth to the Yugoslavian police, but as the gun conveniently has no bullets inside, he's left to present the theory of a mysterious assassin which went off into the night (and snow) who killed Cassetti. After which, the only thing left is for Poirot to once again be asked to come solve a case, this one on the Nile (and I'm cringing at this entire entreprise because apparently there will now be a remake of Death on the Nile next; not to mention people don't come looking for Poirot with murders - murders just happen around him wherever he goes!).

THE END.

There were so many things wrong with this movie I don't even know where to begin.

Character-wise, I could excuse certain alterations from the book to make things more understandable, but to be honest NOTHING made sense. Mary Debenham was much too young to have been Countess Andrenyi's governess while at the Armstrong household (the Countess was Sonia Armstrong's younger sister); MacQueen was okay enough, but there was no emphasis on the fact that HIS life was on the line, threatened by Cassetti and his gang, so his father threw the Armstrong case; Masterman was alright, but Arbuthnot was again an abomination. I understand audiences apparently won't survive if there's not one dark skinned person somewhere in an important role, but this is in the 1930s. There literally wasn't anyone of that kind anywhere prominently that much, not yet at least, not in Europe. It was gaining traction, but it was slow. Pilar Estravados ... is a character pulled straight out of Hercule Poirot's Christmas, but I suppose I can live with this. Hardman's role was apparently expanded from a simple detective in the book to a policeman-turned-Pinkerton detective here with an undercover job as professor for some reason or other. And while Judi Dench is usually good in anything she does, Princess Dragomiroff was terrible because she didn't have an ounce of grace and they were apparently trying to give a nod to Queen Elizabeth II with those dogs. The minor changes (who Dragomiroff was godmother to, the french maid being Michel's sister, not daughter) I could have survived if the big ones weren't so big.

Mainly, however, the problem lay with Poirot.

Not only did Branagh steal all the scenes he was in, but he didn't give the other characters room to breathe and develop and to give us a sense of a community which had been ravaged by the murder of that little girl. For that matter, the entire Armstrong story seemed like a footnote to Poirot's mustache, which I swear needed a trailer and makeup team of its own. Christie's magic of luring the reader in with facts and crumbs and having Poirot logically and methodically go through them is completely lost in Branagh's over-enthusiastic performance where he gives nobody a chance to keep up. Half the magic of Poirot (or Sherlock Holmes) is that you try to guess who did it.

In Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie arguably created the best crime mystery ever written (and heck, she's the biggest-selling author of all time, right behind the Bible, she really doesn't need help from Branagh so her book sales jump again), with a twist that no one saw coming when they first read the book. In the movie, however, it's watered down to bits and pieces and I had the feeling that half the clues were never used - or they were discarded without explanation.

For instance: why didn't they keep the idea of connecting compartments so there's a reason everyone needs Mrs. Hubbard (or Linda Arden, Sonia Armstrong's mother, natch) to open hers so they pass through to Cassetti's and stab him? Why DID they come up with twelve murderers? Who did the red kimono actually belong to? (Countess Andrenyi) If Poirot heard something weird, why didn't he go investigate? How come nobody commented on the fact that Ratchett was lousy with languages so it COULDN'T have been him answering in French when Michel asked what was wrong? And why oh WHY did we have to have a Doctor Who reference in this movie?

I could go on and on. The problem is that Branagh TOLD audiences more than he SHOWED them. Which basically meant there was no mystery as you didn't have to do anything but watch him dance around on screen. I call foul on his statement that he spent a year reading Christie's books to prepare for this role - if he'd actually done that his Poirot would have made sense. I think he went and reread Shakespeare instead.

Not counting my preference, this movie not only destroyed Christie's original work, but it had no head and no tail, Poirot was guessing up to the very end when he should have been making educated deductions, and for some inexplicable reason there was a dark-skinned policeman in the Yugoslavian police force.

I give up. I need to watch the Suchet version now to remove the stain of this thing.

xx

*poster image and video not mine, screencaps by me