This is my favourite ‘murder on the orient express’ movie attempt so far. It’s the most faithful (but not entirely unfortunately) and the one that gets closer to the real soul of the story, but again not entirely. It’s definitely not perfect; can someone explain to me why nobody can leave the book story as it is, why do they all feel the need to make changes? Something that has been a huge success for many many years, is there nobody who thinks maybe it’s because people like it as it is?? Seriously, what is all this nonsense of making the monster and Poirot himself religious figures?? Poirot was never driven by religion in his adventures (so much so that he himself killed someone once). He normally disapproved of murder, but always cared about justice and truth and the fight against evil. They waste time adding useless scenes that have nothing to do with the story, while they could use that time to better illustrate the story and Poirot’s deep understanding of human nature. So much screentime wasted (the religious talk, the praying scene, the stoning of that woman.. even the scene at the beginning explaining the kidnapping case: Poirot will talk about it anyway, so it's useless and redundant) and so little time spent on the actual story, that comes out of the blue at the end, no real investigation, no chance of the viewer thinking 'it's impossible, nobody could do it', on the contrary it seems pretty easy to imagine lots of possible suspects.. basically the brilliancy of the book is thrown away :-/
Personally I thought there was good acting all around, only the scenes were too dark, sometimes I could barely make up the faces.
It starts with Poirot (David Suchet) solving a case abroad, accusing a lieutenant who then shoots himself, but Poirot shows no remorse saying he had his choice. He wants to go back home on the Orient Express. At Istanbul, he watches a crowd stoning a woman on the street because she she was an adulterous.. and he doesn’t flinch, just turns his back on the scene. Later he says that the woman broke the law, so he couldn’t intervene in the local justice, in a foreign Country.
He meets Mr Bouc (Serge Hazanavicius), the director of the Orient Express, who knows him already and insists on finding him a place on the already booked train.
A very arrogant man, Mr Ratchett (Toby Jones), tells Poirot that he ‘will work for him’, because he has enemies and wants to be protected, but Poirot says no!
He doesn’t give anyone any explanation for his refusal, and by the look of it I’d say he felt offended, because the Great Poirot can’t be bought like that! Poirot says he’s a Catholic, and we watch a scene when both Ratchett and Poirot, each in their own cabin, pray before going to sleep… Pray??? Ratchett?? Poirot??
The train is stuck in the snow in Yugoslavia, when Ratchett gets killed, stabbed 12 times. Mr Coup begs Poirot to solve the case so he speaks to everyone on the train. Pierre Michel (Denis Menochet) says that his wife died of grief a few years ago after their daughter’s death; Mr Masterman (Hugh Bonneville) speaks like this about Ratchett: “a sewer rat in a suit is still a sewer rat. He’s just in a suit”, a true thing that seems to be forgotten in this superficial society, where if someone has lots of money or a bit of tv fame, people start treating them as gods :-/ and that’s pathetic :-/
Putting together a few words he heard and a piece of burned paper found next to the victim’s bed, Poirot discovers that Ratchett was actually Cassetti, the man who had kidnapped little Daisy Armstrong demanding a ransom that was promptly paid, but Daisy was never returned because he had killed her one hour after he took her… because of this tragedy, her mother went into labour prematurely: the baby did not live, and neither did she. Her husband couldn’t face another morning and killed himself, as did another person, the young innocent French maid suspected by the police of having helped in the kidnapping, who committed suicide in her cell.
Mr Bouc tells the passengers that “Poirot is all about the truth”. Maid Hildegarde Schmidt (Susanne Lothar) says she saw a woman, Mrs Hubbard (Barbara Hershey) says that a man was in her cabin; a uniform button is found to suggest that the killer might have entered the train disguised as a conductor.
When Miss Mary Debenham (Jessica Chastain) won’t talk to Poirot about her personal life, Colonel Arbuthnot (David Morrissey) speaks for her, saying that they are in love but he’s currently suing his unfaithful wife and can’t have her know he’s in love with another woman. He also says that he knew colonel Armstrong to be a fine man and a decorated officer, but still he’d been happier if Cassetti had been convicted by a jury. “Twelve good men and true?” asks Poirot - “the civilized way” he answers.
At the end Poirot says that it would have been the perfect murder but for the snowdrift. He presents them with two solutions: the first one is that a mafia assassin killed the man for the money and then vanished; the second solution is more complex, and also the truth. They are all connected to the Armstrong case: as we heard, McQueen (Brian J Smith, who I saw also in SGU) is the DA’s son: his father rigged the case because the life of his son had been threatened. Princess Dragomiroff (Eileen Atkins) also admitted to be Daisy’s mother’s godmother. Poirot adds that Countess Andrenyi (Elena Satine) was Daisy’s aunt, the sister of her mother Sonia. Princess Dragomiroff’s maid Hildegarde was the cook of the Armstrong family. Michel was the father of the poor French maid, and Antonio Foscarelli (Joseph Mawle) was in love with her, and also the family chaffeur. Deeply religious Greta Ohlsson (Marie-Josèe Croze) was the nursemaid, Mary Debenham the governess, Masterman served along colonel Armstrong and Arbuthnot was his best friend. Mrs Hubbard was the fake identity of the famous actress Linda Arden, Sonia Armstrong’s mother. Eleven people with a reason to kill him, but Count Andrenyi (Stanley Weber) took his wife’s place, to spare her the experience. Dr Constantine (Samuel West) joined them: he was Mrs Armstrong obstetrician and watched how they suffered.
The speech delivered by the Princess as one by one they stabbed him was something :-)
Poirot gets angry and yells at them that “you have no right to take the law into your hands!” - Mrs Hubbard/Linda:“we looked to the law for justice, and the law let us down” - “you behave like this and we become like savages in the street; …. the rule of law it must be held high, and if it falls you pick it up and hold it even higher”
Really Poirot? What world do you live in? Not the one I know…
Poirot seems determined, and colonel Arbuthnot says he could kill him (and Bouc with him) but they all oppose him and bring him back to reason, because that murder would be wrong and they’d be like gangsters. The princess asks Poirot to let the others go and take only her to the police, but he refuses. He also seems very angry that they tried to fool him, to make a “mockery of Poirot”, which speaks more of his vanity than his sense of justice. He keeps thinking the thing over and over, but the look of it, and when help arrives with the police, they all watch him getting closer and walk over to them. They let him pass, he speaks to the police and they see he’s explaining the mafia solution, with great surprise; then, he walks on alone.
ITA assassinio sull’Orient Express
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