Rent Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

All Varnish, No Menace - Murder on the Orient Express review by griggs

Inspired to watch this having sadly missed it at the BFI's recent Station to Station: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films season.

Have been reading Sidney Lumet's Making Movies, and he won't shut up about how smoothly this shoot ran and how many Oscar nods it picked up — my hopes were sitting far too high before I'd even pressed play.

Which might be the problem. Lumet's whole career is built on turning a single space into its own character — think the jury room in 12 Angry Men practically sweating alongside the cast, or New York itself doing half the work in Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico. A train carriage full of suspects should be catnip for him. Instead the carriage just sits there looking plush, all varnish and no menace, refusing to close in on anyone.

Albert Finney's Poirot doesn't help matters. He plays him clipped and brittle, and it curdles into something genuinely hard to like rather than merely odd — no twinkle, no warmth, just a man permanently irritated by everyone around him.

Luckily the stacked ensemble — Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and co — keeps things moving nicely even when the engine driver's off form.

Oh dear oh dear - Murder on the Orient Express review by MH

I assume the director was aiming for comedy. Sadly he missed. A great cast wasted on a stupid plot and sub-standard direction. But I have always thought Agatha Christie is a vastly over-rated writer, so perhaps it was ultimately her fault. At least Albert Finney was an improvement on the dire David Suchet.