Murder on the Orient Express

The actors here try too hard to flesh out roles that are little more than stock types.

[Kenneth Branagh] doesn't bring much new to the basic conception-a bunch of famous actors play eccentrics cooped up on a train, with secrets to be unearthed. But he does embellish the template with glossy extras.

There's something quaint and comforting about this film and its brand of old-fashioned storytelling, where coincidences are extremely likely, everyone somehow knows a countess, and a man puts honor above all else.

Every cast member is superb, and it's a gorgeous movie to look at. How much its flaws stand out depends entirely on how much you're willing to buy into its earnestness, which is as impossible to miss as Branagh's mustache.

Murder on the Orient Express is nothing more than serviceable.

Branagh's retelling of the classic Agatha Christie tale is visually sumptuous yet otherwise inert, a series of what are essentially cameos by performers far too gifted to waste their time like this.

The movie tries every trick up its sleeve to divert the audiences’ attention from what is really important and intriguing here: the mystery behind the murder of Mr. Ratchett.

Without Poirot spoon-feeding the audience, no viewer would deduce the backstory motivation: a fictionalization of the kidnapping and murder of twenty-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.

In the final count, Murder on the Orient Express is lavish spectacle — not meaningless, so much as shallow.

As a remake it has tiny moments with Branagh's colorful role as the new Poirot, but I'm afraid it lacks a consistent detective intrigue throughout the investigation and grows rather dull with every trace left inside the train. [Full review in Spanish]