“I will see you at the car.”

From Murder on the Orient Express.

Anyone that meets Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) quickly learns that he is an odd man with an even odder mustache and an unbeatable skill for solving mysteries and crimes.  While returning to England after finishing a case in Israel, Poirot finds himself on a train with a small group of very diverse passengers (Bateman, Ridley, Odom Jr., Gad, Depp, Pfeiffer, Cruz, Dench, Garcia-Rulfo, Colman, Jacobi, Kenzari, Boynton, and Polunin… just to name a few of the big actors).  All is fairly normal on the trip, until one of the passengers is murdered and a terrible snowstorm has trapped the train (and the murderer) in the middle of a frozen nowhere.  Not one to let murder go unpunished, or one to trust those that are much less qualified in detective work than himself to handle the case, Poirot turns the train into his crime scene and his fellow passengers into both his witnesses and suspects.  There is a wide array of passengers on board the train, but none are removed from Poirot’s list of suspects.  The other passengers all claim innocence and seem to have no information to offer to the case, but Poirot’s skill as a brilliant detective soon shine through and he is able to conduct his search for the killer.

This most recent big screen retelling of Agatha Christie’s who-dun-it mystery is a captivating ride, for both those who do and do not already know the story.  While I had doubts about Branagh’s portrayal of Poirot (as director and actor), he quickly shows that he can manage the uniqueness of the character and the challenge of revamping such a famous story.  The camera work is engaging, drawing you into the scene without letting the small size of the train to inhibit the story.  While the middle of the story is slightly different from the book, the conclusion is satisfying and well-planned; my only issue with the movie is one action of one character seems out of place, even with the alteration of the script, but the issue is quickly resolved and the movie moves on without any major hindrance.

| Rated: PG-13 | Running Time: 114 minutes |Genre: mystery/thriller |

||Family Viewing||Cursing: 2 of 10|Nudity: 0 of 10|Sexuality: 1 of 10|Gore: 2 of 10

|AVAILABLE FOR HOME VIEWING|