Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie's never been one of the most respected writers, but her work still has a strong audience appeal - the mixture of clever puzzle plots and eccentric detectives still survives any perceived flatness in the writing. And "Murder on The Orient Express" was successful enough 40-odd years ago with an all star cast that it's not utterly a mistake to bring it back with a new bunch of stars-and-rising-young-things.

This is, however, jigged up a bit to be a bit livelier - we get a prelude mystery for Poirot to solve in what would be a "pre-credits" scene except that there's only abbreviated credits at the beginning, and a tag that suggests a line for a possible sequel (which references the film that followed up the Lumet version). And some of the investigations do send Poirot outside the carriage (including a chase around a railway bridge and a stomp across the roof), giving it a bit more scenery. But all in all this is still the standard "it could be any one of us, Poirot interrogates the suspects and evaluates the evidence, before lining up everyone to deliver the solution. It's a little tonally odd - Branaugh both in performance and in direction plays much of it for jolly larks, but the solution involves a somewhat awkward gear shift into actual drama requiring us to take the paperthin characters and their personal lives somewhat seriously, which doesn't play particularly cleanly.

As for the rest of the stars, there is a slight blurring which means some slip into the background more than others - Judi Dench, Olivia Colman and Derek Jacobi, for instance, only get brief clue-drops, while Michelle Pfeiffer steals scenes wholesale in a delightfully splashy manner. This isn't a complete write-off, but it's not quite as good as it, perhaps, could have been.