I think this is more consistently a better film than Orient Express but the issues seem to shine brighter and it doesn’t have an absolutely killer finale to kinda tilt the scales. 

This film looks so horrifically fake. It’s entirely distracting the entire time how obviously this was not made in anything real. 

I’m of two minds on how Poirot is portrayed here too. The back story is ludicrous. Cut it. Like, everyone knows that any amount of scar tissue and moderate damage will 100% prevent hair from ever growing there again. So making dude have the most fucked up face and lips ever and having his solution be growing that magnificent mustache breaks so many common sense bells in my brain. But at the same time that little addition makes for a very powerful finale scene. There’s meaning and weight that is spoken without words and you feel that gravity. But still, fucking c’mon. Also, Poirot got emotional in Orient Express but I feel like they let him get too out of control here. It’s good and extremely effective because it allows Branagh to emote very well and add gravitas but at the same time it’s antithetical to the character and what the character should be even within the context of this single movie. 

Very bold and interesting choices that were made for specific purposes and the film is wildly successful at them but at the same time they kinda break the film. That’s honestly a little impressive. 

I’ve also never read this novel so the story was a surprise and I can’t speak to any changes made (outside the extremely obvious as previously mentioned). But this mystery was very good. There’s layers to it. It’s not just a single incident to solve. It keeps getting more complex as it goes along making the answer more difficult to try and parse. I like how the mystery part comes very late in the film because I really liked all the build up and “hang out” stuff (I’m a huge sucker for just hanging out with a cast in a movie) and once the mystery gets rolling there’s little time to waste. But it’s still way too long?? The pacing is just weird here. 

They did Bouc dirty. He’s not even in this book but here they are making a returning character to tie Poirot to all these elaborate settings and they make him so charming and lovable despite being a spoiled rich putz and they just fucking do him dirty. No forgiveness. 

I liked this one too. The flaws are more obvious but the strengths are…stronger…and it plays better the whole time instead of a lot of ups and downs but it also lacks a big grandiose finale that really gripped me. Just a very peculiar film series so far. Enjoyable but fragile.