Speaking of where to draw the line... for years Johnny Depp seemed cool and lovably eccentric to me. I had a naive crush on him. But Depp's schtick wore thin over the years and then Amber Heard divorced him and revealed how abusive he was. So now that I'm actively disliking him, what films should I be avoiding solely because of him? It's easy to skip the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, as that stupid franchise is way past its prime. And yet Hollywood insists on shoving Depp into other franchises, like making him a surprise villain in that Harry Potter spinoff, and Branagh casting him in Orient Express.
I was willing to tolerate Depp in this role because I know Ratchett is the victim who dies, so I was hoping we'd be done with him very quickly. Branagh unfortunately lets him linger quite a while, and the rest of the movie doesn't make up for it. The film is mediocre, and Branagh inserted some past love Katherine for Poirot. If you're going to shoehorn in a backstory for him, at least make it Vera Rossakoff, who's in the actual Christie books! The movie is not as bad an abomination as the David Suchet version, but it's like Branagh didn't learn the lesson from that awful version, that he in fact might admire that version. Blech.
SPOILERS BELOW
Branagh shouldn't have wasted so much time on Poirot's previous case in Jerusalem, and the rush to get him on the train and squeeze him into somebody else's compartment. There should have been more time for the current mystery, and then we could have seen Poirot's eccentricities about his eggs, his mustache, etc.
On the train, there's too much Ratchett, and too little time for post-murder investigation; Branagh tries to impress us with a couple of annoying, long overhead shots too. The other guests on the train are not developed properly. We get lots of shots of them just sitting silently as a group, but only a few emerge as individuals in conversation. There's not enough clarity about how a couple of people were related to the Armstrongs. This could have been helped by flashbacks showing them with the French maid who killed herself.
I did like the development of Dr Arbuthnot, and him trying to save Mary Debenham when he thought Poirot was accusing her of being the killer. I kind of wish there had been more development about Mary as mastermind, because she didn't come across here as calculating and cold. I did like that Linda Arden got to make her plea about taking the sole blame and letting the others go free, but I didn't like that Poirot told them all to murder him, acting ethically outraged. Why does no one let the ending be the ending? Why do they insist on making Poirot morally conflicted where he was not? And why did Branagh have to plug Death on the Nile, cheekily dismissing whatever the London case was?
I still proudly maintain that Alfred Molina's TV version is the best version of Orient Express, and I don't care who thinks I'm wrong. My sister didn't like it when I showed her it, but I still love its update. It maintains the proper ending with no added moralizing and darkness, and gives the characters a chance to breathe by cutting some people who were too tangential to matter.
Branagh's ambitions were greater than his skill, and I'll be more cautious about spending money on him in future. He showed a lack of judgment in casting Depp, after all.
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