While interrogating a British army officer in Palestine, Poirot catches him in a lie and the officer pulls his revolver and commits suicide right in front of him. But who among them killed Samuel Ratchett and why?įrom the first scene Poirot purists will know that this is not your typical ITV/PBS production of an Agatha Christie novel. Poirot soon discovers that Samuel Ratchett is personally connected to the criminal and so are each of the passengers in a sad and tragic way. The evidence leads him to the famous kidnapping and murder five years earlier of a young girl Daisy Armstrong by Lanfranco Cassetti who was tried for the crime but not convicted. Constantine (Samuel West) Poirot begins to collect clues in the victims room and interview all of the passengers on the train. Poirot’s friend and director of the train line Xavier Bouc (Serge Hazanavicius) asks him to investigate the murder, and with the assistance of Dr. Not only has he has been stabbed repeatedly he appears to have been drugged. During the night a ruthless American businessman Samuel Ratchett (Toby Jones) is murdered. Hercule Poirot boards a luxury passenger train the Orient Express traveling from Istanbul to London and on the second night out the train becomes snowbound in Yugoslavia. The bones of the plot are basically the same. It still made me smile in appreciation of the great acting and direction from an era that we may look back upon in wonder. It was a dog and pony show that Agatha Christie’s novel never was. With the passing years, it is even more of an opulent showpiece of bravada by the then fading Hollywood studio system than I remembered, packed with so many stars and stunning costumes that my eye could not settle upon the seriousness of the story nor my head erase the earworm that the musical score created. Having seen this version some 36 years ago (yikes), I watched it again in preparation for this new David Suchet production. Hubbard and Ingrid Bergman in her Oscar winning role as Swedish missionary Greta Ohlsson. Amazingly, this new production is only the second time it has been adapted for television and follows the famous and glitzy 1974 Hollywood movie directed by Sidney Lumet with an all-star cast including Albert Finney as Detective Hercule Poirot, Lauren Becall as the outrageously brash American Mrs.
Mystery fans were treated to the opening of season X of Poirot on Masterpiece Mystery last Sunday with a new episode of Murder on the Orient Express, one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels.
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