Le crime de l'Orient-Express

Having seen the theatrical film version of "Murder on the Orient Express" when it was first released back in the 1970's, and having thoroughly enjoyed it, I was very skeptical about a remake of it, especially knowing that this production was made for CBS-TV and being giving its first airing on commercial television, instead of being done on PBS's "Mystery".

My radar shot up the minute I heard John Leonard's favorable review of it on "CBS Sunday Morning". Leonard is an extremely articulate, pseudopoetic writer, and more often than not, a sardonic and harsh critic, and he does not endorse remakes of popular hits easily--except, perhaps, when they air on CBS, the network he just happens to work for.

My fears were fully justified. This film is the most crass retelling of an Agatha Christie novel I have ever seen. The story has been updated from 1934 to the present in order to give Hercule Poirot the oh-so-trendy oppotunity to work on the case by plugging into a laptop. The glamorous aspects of the original film, with its elegant, stylish, upper-class look, are totally gone.

So, instead of getting butlers and former army colonels as suspects, we get fitness experts and trainers who run around in T-shirts and sports coats, and who speak with Bronx accents. And Meredith Baxter, of all people, plays Mrs. Hubbard, the compulsive talker played so well in the original by the legendary Lauren Bacall. In fact, none of the performances here are memorable, especially when they have to compete against the likes of Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud, Sean Connery, Richard Widmark (whose character is played here by Peter Strauss!), Martin Balsam, Jacqueline Bisset, Wendy Hiller, and Michael York. And Alfred Molina, while quite good as Hercule Poirot, still can't hold a candle to Albert Finney in the original, not to mention Peter Ustinov and David Suchet as later incarnations of the detective.

Worse yet, while some seemingly small details have been left the same, some vitally important ones have been changed, one of them being the number of passengers, an important element in the original. Some of Poirot's deductions, rather than being revealed as surprises toward the end, are explained about two-thirds of the way through.

But the vilest crime committed in this film, is the implication, at the end, that Poirot has been having, shall we say, a less-than-platonic relationship with a beautiful woman! (She appears out of nowhere in the final scene, smiling at him, and calling him "Hercule".) This, an utter desecration of the 'cold-fish" Poirot that we all know and love, is a betrayal as sacrilegeous as William Gillette having Sherlock Holmes fall in love in his 19th century stage play!

Avoid this, unless you are masohistic, have a relative in the cast, or think that TV remakes are always better than the original films.

A made-for-TV version of the famous Agatha Christie story of a murder committed on the famous Istanbul to Paris train.

What is the point of this film? There is already a big budget movie version that the world and his brother have seen: and having seen the ending half the fun of the film is over before it has started. This one updates the story to the modern day, but this adds nothing - or for that matter takes nothing away.

The one thing it proves is that the movie can be told in a shorter time than the big screen version. Alfred Molina tackles the central of Hercule Poirot without being showy. The rest of the cast come and go like the TV actors they no doubt are.

A very average product.

It is Alfred Molina's great misfortune that, in portraying Hercule Poirot, he has been preceded by Peter Ustinov, Albert Finney, and David Suchet. Had this not been true, we might have been tempted to give his performance a higher rating than it is now possible to do.

The original novel by Agatha Christie (same title) is one of the greatest whodunits ever penned. For unknown reasons, Ustinov never did it. My guess is that, although his Poirot films were made after the timely death of the pernicious and much-despised Code, the prospect of a murderer getting away with the crime was still too daunting for Hollywood. Suchet has yet to make Orient, but then it was only last year ('07) that he finally did "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" (with, we hope, Ariadne Oliver). Suchet's voice is used for Poirot in the 2006 Orient Express video game.

So finally, in 2001 a TV version of Orient is made with Alfred Molina in the key role. Alas. Molina is a talented actor. His portrayal of Poirot, while not definitive nor even close, is passable – even pretty good in some ways. However, once we compare him with his predecessors (not to mention the literary original), the problems show up like fat, pendulous, juicy pimples (the kind we all loved to pop back in the day). We all know, for instance, that Poirot was fastidious to the point of school-marmish fussiness. Molina's Poirot is neat and that's about it. Molina's accent is a sort of generalized European, not the pointedly confrontational French that Poirot affected. Molina does use the catch-phrase "little grey cells", but he rattles them out because they're in the script, not because (as is the case) Poirot is obsessive about them. Indeed, Poirot's fundamentally obsessive character is de-emphasized to the point of vanishing. Molin'a Poirot seldom speaks of himself in the third person; Poirot does so rather a lot. His mustache is some short hair under his nose; Poirot's is a fashion statement and accessory that defines his dandified appearance. Molina doesn't wear gloves. Nor spats, but then the date of the mystery has been moved up to about the date the film was made. Anyone who by now believes I haven't made my case doesn't know Hercule.

While Suchet is the best Poirot overall, Ustinov bears away the palm for best actor. He inhabits the role so effectively that we become unconscious of his imposing height and bulk. Finney, who appears in the 1974 Orient, lacks for little in the Poirotishness of his portrayal. This is a competition that Molina simply can't win.

The plot of the 2001 film is, incidentally, pretty much the same as that of the novel and the 1974 film. Poirot is traveling from Istanbul on the famous Orient Express. He shares the first class car with a diverse set of individuals. One of them, a highly unpleasant person (Ratchett) is stabbed to death in the dead of night. There are plenty of clues … in fact, as Finney's Poirot observes and Molina's does not, there are too many of them. The train is stalled in its journey (snow slide in 1974, rock slide in 2001) and the railway's CEO commissions Poirot to find the killer. Through patient questioning and separating false clues from real ones, Poirot does so … twice. If you don't actually know the plot already, your cultural deprivation is truly unfortunate.

The problem with the 2001 production, however, runs deeper than merely the star. It's virtually the whole cast and what the update in time has done to their roles. The update from 1935 to c.2001 was apparently made because the producers figured that education has been so inadequate recently that viewers would never figure out what a White Russian (Princess Dragomirov) is, nor understand references to the Lindburgh kidnapping, nor fail to be puzzled by people going to Iraq for actual constructive purposes (archaeology), nor … well, you get the gist.

The result is that we have characters who are updated but far less interesting. As for the participating actors: recall that in 1974 we get Martin Balsam, Richard Widmark, Wendy Hiller, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Michael York, Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Perkins, John Gielgud, … well, again you get the gist. Want a cast list of the 2001 film? Well, there's Leslie Caron, and Who? …and Whom? …and What? …and Which? …and …and …and … well, and a group of actors, most of whom are still working. They appear primarily in small roles in TV series episodes and in fairly little-known films. The upshot is that we get OK performances of a fairly uninspired script, and that's about it. The exception is from the one fine actor in the group, Leslie Caron. That's the upside. The downside is that her performance is deeply informed by that of Wendy Hiller as Princess Dragomirov. In this film the character becomes Señora Alvarado, the widow of a fairly nasty Latin American dictator. The problem here is that the character has way more social standing than would someone coming from such a sleazy background. She is in fact treated as the royalty Dragomirov was. That is, the character doesn't really compute … in order to keep character relationships as they were before the rewrite, Alvarado had to be accorded deference even Eva Peron didn't get in exile. Still, Caron manages to convince us of her bona fides. As I said, she's good.

The cold, hard fact is that there are quite a few things on TV that are better than this remake. That's something we can't say about the 1974 original. The Poirot of the remake, Alfred Molina, is a pretty good actor – but for whatever reason he has seriously misconceived the part he plays and as Poirot he winds up in 4th place in a field of 4. The picture, alas, winds up in about 9th place in a field of 2.

The 1974 movie of this book was a mixed bag. Obligations to the all-star cast caused most of the problems, as the writers and editors jockeyed to give everyone an equitable amount of screen time, an actorly moment and some close-ups. This prevented it from being a very deep film, and Sidney Lumet is really only a workmanlike filmmaker. But still, despite those limitations, there is much pleasure in the earlier version; the wordless flashback prologue of a kidnapping is beautifully done. Rare for a murder mystery, the unfolding of the solution provides a startling, satisfying emotional payload.

For this retelling, a decision was made to update the material to the contemporary era. The topical references that acknowledge the world has changed since the thirties really achieve naught, except perhaps alleviating some writers fear that the material is passé... There's too many of these self-conscious references (to air travel, the internet, VCRs, taking the Express out of mothballs, Ross Perot) and they become annoying. Other changes are there simply because filmmakers thought it would make it more conventional (Hercule Poirot has a ridiculous romantic interest, "Vera"). The biggest bummer is the substitution of a utilitarian diesel engine for the original stylish steam locomotive. Thud.

Ultimately these revisions add nothing to the movie and seem to have taken the focus off producing a tight, compelling, methodical script.

The highlight of the previous movie was the cross-cutting between the temporal time-frame and the crime. This movie lifts that technique, but doesn't really come up with any contribution of it's own. The color palette, the research and the envisioning of the crime were all more vivid in the earlier version.

Alfred Molina is pretty bad in this. It just isn't interesting.

This isn't any good.

It's too modernized.

Get it?

No, seriously, they would have been better off sticking to Christie's original source and making it more like the 1974 film starring Albert Finney. (Which is what my TV guide had listed in place of this atrocity.) This made-for-TV version is with Alfred Molina, who lacks energy and umph. No wonder. The material is rather dire and the film is a complete mess. Someone references O.J. Simpson. Please.

Don't see this.

See the 1974 version.