Murder on the Orient Express

 I thoroughly enjoyed Death on the Nile, and the form Kenneth Brannagh gave the famous belgian detective Hercule Poirot (I read all his 33 novels and 50+ short stories as a teen), so Noshi and me sat back to watch the actual predecessor of the franchise he is making.

Perhaps the most famous of Poirot stories, Murder on the Orient Express was released back in 2017, based on the novel from 1934 of the same name by Agatha Christie.

When Poirot solves a theft at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, he is approached by the British police to solve a case for them in London.  Thanks to his friend Bouc, he gets a place onboard the Orient Express together with a heap of excentric passengers like american business man Edward Ratchett, american man-hunting widow Caroline Hubbard, austrian professor Hardman, russian princess Dragomiroff, and spanish missionary Pilar Estravados (she replaces the swedish nurse from the books).

To give an impression of the star cast, read those characters again but replacing their names with Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe dame Judy Dench and Penelope Cruz... you get the idea.

Ratchett offers Poirot to become a sort of bodyguard for him during the trip, as he made enemies during his business ventures and fears retaliation.  But Poirot refuses, as he sees Ratchett for the crooked business man and swindler that he is.  That night, Ratchett is murdered, Poirot having seen as the only one a person in a red kimono running through the train.  Mrs Hubbard claims someone was in her compartment that night, and Poirot starts an investigation.  He gets some additional time for this as an avalanche blocks the trains journey, waiting for it to be dug out by railroad workers.

Poirot finds a partly burned note that connects Ratchett to the murder of a young girl called Daisy Armstrong.  He had received a letter from her father asking for help, but colonel Armstrong took his own life before he could answer.  Her mother had died after giving birth to a stillborn baby, making it in essence a double crime.  He discovers Ratchett was indeed her kidnapper and murderer, John Casetti.  The family's nursemaid was wrongly blamed and took her own life in custody, while being proved innocent later on though.  

When he uncovers more evidence, Hubbard is stabbed but luckily none lethal.  He discovers that in one way or another, many of the passengers are connected to the Armstrong family or case, as he is shot in the shoulder by doctor Arbuthnot who claims responsibility for the murder.  Knowing he was a former army sniper, he realises he never actually wanted to kill him.  He confronts the passengers offering two possible theories, and also revealing all their connections to the case, and they all had motive, while the other is a simple exterior assassin boarded and escaped the train.

He predicts they all acted together, which Hubbard, who really was Daisy's grandmother, confirms.  She had planned the murder and enlisted all the others to help with it, and everyone took a turn stabbing Casetti.  He challenges the passengers to shoot him as he can`t let the truth be covered up, as he, obsessed with truth and balance, simply cannot lie.

With the train back on track, Poirot decides justice is just impossible in this case, and for the first time he will have to live with a lie and imbalance, as he decides to go for the lone assassin theorem instead, letting them all go with the murder...

While I already knew "who" had commited the murder from the books, this was a nice adaption to the modern time silver screen, and now I just have to wait for the adaption of the third movie, A Haunting in Venice, to be released on Disney+