One murder. Thirteen suspects. One ridiculous mustache. The new trailer for Murder on the Orient Express looks pretty much the way Agatha Christie probably envisioned it, with an all-star cast of characters, trapped on a train together, eyeing each other suspiciously.
It’s been a long, long time since we’ve had a big screen English-language version of an Agatha Christie novel, whose many murder mysteries are still beloved, still influential, but more frequently adapted abroad or on television over the last few decades. You’d have to go back all the way to 1989 to find a theatrical production, and that was the oft-forgotten Ten Little Indians, starring Donald Pleasance and Frank Stallone.
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Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express is more ambitious than that, and features one of the most eye-popping ensemble casts in recent years. The film stars Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, a master detective with one hell of a mustache, as he interrogates the likes of Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Lesie Odom Jr., Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Marwan Kenzari, Olivia Colman, Lucy Boynton, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Sergei Polunin.
The first trailer for Murder on the Orient Express rolled in this morning, and it does what it needs to do. It sells the atmosphere, the isolation, the suspicion and – in one very impressive shot – the whole amazing cast, all at once. The music choice… well, it kinda sucks, but a lot of trailers have crappy music nowadays.
Murder on the Orient Express arrives in theaters on November 10, 2017.
Top Photo: 20th Century Fox
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
