Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Just the name "Orient Express" conjures images of a bygone era. Add an all-star cast (including Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, and Lauren Bacall, to name a few) and Agatha Christie's delicious plot and how can you go wrong? Particularly if you add in Albert Finney as Christie's delightfully persnickety sleuth, Hercule Poirot. Someone has knocked off nasty Richard Widmark on this train trip and, to Poirot's puzzlement, everyone seems to have a motive--just the setup for a terrific whodunit. Though it seems like an ensemble film, director Sidney Lumet gives each of his stars their own solo and each makes the most of it. Bergman went so far as to win an Oscar for her role. But the real scene-stealer is the ever-reliable Finney as the eccentric detective who never misses a trick. --Marshall Fine Amazon.com essential video

 Very enjoyable
I love mysteries and I love Agatha Christie. Though not overly exciting or suspensful, this is a gem of a film. It features wonderful performances and a great favorite character of mine, Hercule Poirot. He is just a very likeable man and he kept me guessing the whole while. Its more of a character film than a true mystery, though it definitly contains that element. I read the book in school and it certainly remains loyal, I believe, to the text, which is such a rarity. February 4, 2008

 The last gasp of old Hollywood
In many ways, this all-star film, based very faithfully on Agatha Christie's most famous exotic Hercule Poirot murder mystery, was the last gasp of what in 1974 constituted "old Hollywood", directed by one of its best young studio directors of the time (Sidney Lumet) and featuring a remarkable cast of actors many of whom hearkened back to the great era of the studio system (including Lauren Bacall, George Coulouris, and Ingrid Bergman), many great stars of the British stage (Wendy Hiller, John Gielgud, and Wendy Hiller), and also many of the best stars working in film since the collapse of the studio system (Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jacqueline Bisset). The best parts of the film are in its opening half-hour, when they gather aboard the train in Istanbul and get ready for departure: once the train gets snowbound and the big murder occurs, the enclosed space seems not a little claustrophobic as Hercule Poirot (Finney, in disfiguring make-up) rounds up and interviews the suspects.

The film is immeasurably helped by its famous score by Richard Rodney Bennett and by its brilliantly disturbing pre-title sequence explaining the sensational kidnapping and murder of a wealthy Scottish colonel's daughter that predetermines all the film's later events, and which all by itself is genuinely one of the greatest sequences in Seventies film. The sequence beautifully establishes an air of evil and chaos that haunts the rest of the film long afterward. January 27, 2008

 Truly riveting !
Bringing a classic murder mystery to the screen can often result in huge disappointment, but this is a GEM! Great performances by all, and an especially sly and hammy performance by the incomparable Albert Finney. I was on the edge of my seat throughout..... January 18, 2008

 Not very thrilling
It has a list of stars that's almost as long as the movie: Lauren Bacall, Albert Finney (who's utterly brilliant as Poirot), Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins, Jacqueline Bisset, and Vanessa Redgrave. It's directed by the fantastic Sidney Lumet.

Yet for all the star power in cast and crew, I never found "Murder in the Orient Express" to be very thrilling, and I find that to be a problem in an Agatha Christie adaptation. The end is cool, and smart, but I ended watching the movie without caring very much about the murderers - and even less about the victim.
January 18, 2008

 The best mystery movie ever~!
This is the classic of all classics! The best mystery movie ever made with the best cast ever! Albert Finney is the best Hercule Poirot, as even Agatha Christie herself said. January 12, 2008

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