Review: Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) - Kenneth Brannaugh

       Murder on the Orient Express is potentially a good, very fun movie. It has a hell of a cast (Rey, Cat Lady, Dame Judi Dench's accent, Bobby the Hotel Manager, Vickie--Or, Christina, I mean...or was she Barcelona? And...shudders...Josh Gad), a visually dedicated director in Kenneth Brannaugh, and a decent idea for a mystery at the middle of it (have you heard of Agatha Christie? I think she used to write for Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars). It's stylish and even tries to have a bit of a sense of humor about itself. So why did I fall asleep for a good forty-five minutes of it? Oh yeah, because it was boring as fuck.
      The second the movie gets on the titular train (Titty Train, as it was called during production, #Imdbtriviapage#Nottrue), the movie gets stuffy, slow, and boring. By the time the Titty Train comes to a halt so has the narrative (LITERARY PUN-BURN). And for all it's misdirection and twists, the movie is actually much more interested in an entirely other mystery, existing mostly in flashbacks. Just a train full of backstories stuck in a tiny set for almost two hours while all we do is talk about the reasons everyone may or may not be on the train FOR THIS EXACT TRIP?!?! Do slowly explain more!
       The movie starts out great. Christie's most famous character and the world's most famous detective, Hercule Poirnot (Brannaugh), just solved a helluva whopper of a mystery in Jerusalem and stopped World War III (Wait...this movie takes place in 1935...HE COULDN'T EVEN STOP WORLD WAR II. WHAT A FUCKING CHUMP). Then we get about fifteen gorgeous minutes of wide shots, exotic Middle-Eastern and European tableau. Poirnot's excessive idiosyncrasies, like needing his eggs to be the same size or stepping with BOTH feet, are even kinda cute. But then we get on the train, with about 40 different characters, and the movie just stops.
       Now look, Agatha Christie was one of the world's greatest writers (Was? Is? Is Agatha Christie still alive, guys? I need answers! I don't actually have wifi, this review is just the scribblings of a mad man locked far away from humanity, using only his excrement and fingers to write), and she definitely knows how to write a hell of a murder mystery. She wrote great mystery thrillers in the 1930s. But that's just the thing. This isn't a book, and it isn't the 1930s, and Kenneth Brannaugh seems a little too insistent of making it feel exactly the same anyway.

       Some books don't translate well to movies. And that's okay. They are extremely different artistic mediums. For books, it doesn't matter nearly as much if you stop the narrative to have a paragraph (or page, or chapter) describing someone's back story. In fact it can delay other aspects of the story and add suspense. But it's different in film. You need different ways to create and build suspense. And having a character talk like a narrator going over the bullet points of their life and every specific reason EXACTLY WHY THEY'RE ON THIS TRAIN gets suuuuuper fucking boring in the visual medium of movies. Ever hear the expression, "Show, don' tell?" That goes doubly for movies. Cuz you use your eyes, you see.
       Since I didn't see a solid forty minutes in the middle of the film I don't quite feel it's fair I review it in its entirety. Though, let's face it, the fact that I fell asleep during a 12:15 showtime on a Saturday afternoon when I wasn't even hungover is review enough. But because of that, to make sure you get your money's worth with this review (haha, no one involved here is making ANY money), let me pad it with some things that possibly happened in the middle:

• A scene where Johnny Depp gets drunk and abusive with all the young women on set.
• Willem Dafoe cuts off his penis.
• Poirnot talks about the difficulties of directing Thor, but ultimately says he enjoyed the experience.
• Josh Gad ran around asking everyone if they've ever seen Th Book of Mormon.
• Johnny Depp, once again, starts verbally and physically abusing all the female cast members, and then all the men on the train say he probably didn't do it and the women are just saying it for the attention. 

       I guess what I'm really trying to say about Murder on the Orient Express is: Fuck you, Johnny Depp, you fucking piece of shit.

       Oh yeah and the movie is forgettable and faithful to the source material to a fault. Skip it.

Grade: 5 out of 10 adorably snoozing amateur movie reviewers.