YMMV / Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: 21st-century audiences fully expect public transportation to be crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, so Poirot has to specifically point out that a first class train car with twelve passengers in the middle of winter in 1934 is "fully booked" and might as well have passengers spilling out the windows, meaning it's a vital clue that the entire situation is engineered. There is some outdated slang in that by "booked" (in first class), they mean sleeping compartments, and even "booked" the Orient Express is hardly crowded.
• Awesome Music: Patrick Doyle's score was snubbed by the Academy Awards, but the International Film Music Critics gave it nominations for the score as a whole and the track "Justice" a separate nomination itself.
• Award Snub:
  • Haris Zambarloukos's cinematography was somehow overlooked for an Academy Award nomination.
  • Michelle Pfeiffer's performance was also overlooked for a Best Supporting Actress nom.
• Catharsis Factor: Upon learning about the kind of guy Ratchett/Cassetti actually was, his murder—especially when it's shown how everyone did it too—does come come off as therapeutic karma for an Asshole Victim who completely deserved it.
• Critical Dissonance: Critics gave it mixed reviews; the average viewer response has been much more positive, and it ended up making over six times its budget at the box office ($55 million vs $339 million).
• Harsher in Hindsight: This wouldn't be the last time in Disney's Christieverse that the main villain would be played by a scandal-ridden actor, though this time around Fox was no doubt aware of Johnny Depp's real-life domestic drama at the time he was cast as Ratchett/Cassetti.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Though not many people ever doubted Kenneth Branagh's abilities as an actor, his turn as Poirot takes things to a whole new level. He seamlessly disappears into the character.
  • For those who haven't been paying attention, this is also the breakout for Josh Gad's impressive dramatic talents. He is quite the buffoon at the start, but the second half of the film really shows off his character's torment.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This isn't the first time Derek Jacobi has been in a work based off of one of Christie's books. He played the victim in The Murder at the Vicarage episode of Marple, and now he is playing the victim's butler.
  • Speaking of Jacobi, him playing the character of Masterman is either this or a deliberate Casting Gag. Even better, the Master has actually used that "alias" in the expanded universe.
  • Leslie Odom Jr. had played "a terrible shot" guilty of murdering a man who wronged him before. This time, he is "a [doctor] with a marksman's ability".
  • Sergei Polunin played the Hungarian Count Rudolph Andrenyi, often seen in the company of his wife Helena, and was the Andrenyi to stab Cassetti instead of his wife. Previously, in the ballet "Mayerling", he played the leading role of Crown Prince Rudolf^note the actual man spelled his name as "Rudolf" but even the plaque in front of his coffin spells it "Rudolph", liberal heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, most famous for killing himself and a mistress (Baroness Mary Vetsera) in a Murder-Suicide pact.
• It Was His Sled: The plot and mystery of the book has become Pop Culture Osmosis, so the film has to find new angles to take since It's the Journey That Counts.
• Moral Event Horizon: The murder of Daisy Armstrong, of course. It sets off a chain of consequences which caused the deaths of her parents, her unborn sibling and a member of the Armstrong household and ruined the lives of more people, with 12 of them seeking revenge on the criminal.
• Narm:
  • Any time Poirot starts talking to his picture of his Lost Lenore, Katherine, is quite narmful. It comes across as a blatant Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, and the scenes are silly and laughable rather than heartstring-tugging.
  • The murder scene when all the pieces are put together, while cathartic as all hell, comes off akin to the Get A Hold Of Yourself Man scene from Airplane!.
• Narm Charm: Poirot's mustache (and mustache sleep guard) are as ridiculous as they are charming.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Ratchett's scream in the teaser trailer will seep into your soul.
  • For anyone who is acrophobic, it's unnerving to see the train stopped atop a bridge, as though begging to fall.
  • The Jump Scare when Dr. Arbuthnot shoots Poirot.
  • The flashback when the conspirators carry out the murder. In other adaptations Cassetti has been drugged into unconsciousness, but here he is clearly awake and aware, though too doped up to be able to fight off MacQueen, who is holding him down so the others can stab him.
• Paranoia Fuel: You are traveling on a train that gets stuck in a snowbank and somebody is murdered. Meaning that a fellow passenger could be the murderer. This causes the passengers to turn against one another and accuse each other of committing the crime — something that didn't happen in the original novel but does make sense for people putting on an act.
• Retroactive Recognition: Phil Dunster, who plays the late Colonel Armstrong, is now best known as Jamie Tartt on Ted Lasso.
• Signature Scene: The rest of the film plays out without too much deviation from the source or even parodies. Then comes the summation, complete with Branagh and Pfeiffer pulling off some of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching performances of the whole film. Even if some of the other parts seem a little cliche, that scene tends to be fondly remembered and to some is enough to make the remake worth it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The inevitable reaction over Poirot's large mustache, which is true to the text but differs radically from the Pop Culture Osmosis tradition of adaptations giving Poirot a small, neat mustache to reflect his personality. This traditional look is considered Truer to the Text.
  • The several brief moments of action integrated into the film's plot were not well received by Christie fans who would prefer the largely Non-Action Guy interpretation of Poirot.
  • Giving Poirot a Lost Lenore; in the books Poirot is famously celibate, with the possible exception of his interest in Countess Vera Rossakoff.
  • According to Kenneth Branagh, he wanted to depict a Poirot who wasn't at the final third of his career but still had a ways to go before he was the legendary Poirot (probably similar to James Bond in Casino Royale (2006)). It is not very evident here, since half the characters seem to have heard of him. However, they know of him as a famous police detective, and he has to inform them that he left the force and is now a P.I.
  • The film also had to contend with the twenty five year run of the television series Poirot with David Suchet in the title role, who'd become Poirot so completely for so long to a generation of fans that any other actor and production would inevitably be compared to his often described "definitive" take on the role.
  • Poirot being canonically neurodivergent, making him fit the Defective Detective trope that was popular at the time. While the novel's Poirot was a Neat Freak, any neurodivergence was purely fan theory.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Didn't notice the CGI? That's a stellar example of how to use it, especially during the avalanche.
  • A fair amount of of the effects weren't CGI: A full-scale model of the train was built, and was pushed along a track at the studio for shots of the train leaving Istanbul and arriving at Brod. The train crash site was also just a single massive outdoor set. Perhaps the best effect was simulating the train journey. The carriages are sets in studio, mounted on hydraulic pistons to simulate bumps and bounces, but real footage was taken of a train ride through New Zealand. Rather than just Green Screen the carriage windows to put the scenery in by computer, the footage was projected on a large bank of LED screens running along the full length of the set, so the scenery was composited in the camera. It was so effective that, when footage of this technique was shown to studio managers alongside footage taken aboard a real train, they couldn't tell the difference.
  • The significant use of SteadiCam throughout the film also contributed to a very slick look and interesting camera moves. For instance, the last shot after Poirot gets off required the camera operator to walk backwards through the train and step onto a boom lift, which then elevated him to get a shot of the train pulling away.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The opening scene. Poirot is asked to identify which religious leader stole a priceless artifact among a priest, an imam, and a rabbi. He reveals the true culprit is the police inspector who hired him. The movie could be saying that the different religions who are so often enemies can coexist in harmony, and people who might not even belong to those faiths try to incite conflict between them for their own selfish gain.
• The Woobie:
  • Most of the passengers on the train were somehow connected to the Armstrong family and grieved as much as the parents when Daisy was murdered by Casseti.
  • Poirot himself due to his Lost Lenore.
• Woolseyism: One gag involves people calling Poirot Hercules (the English spelling for the Greek hero) instead of Hercule (the French spelling). Accordingly, in French dubs they call him Achille instead, replacing "I do not slay the lions" with "I have tougher heels" and providing an extra Mythology Gag (Achille Poirot being the name of Hercule's fictional smarter older brother in The Big Four).

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