Corpse of Christie's

Can a mystery movie be enjoyable even when you know the "solution" beforehand? That's the question I set out to answer when I popped Murder on the Orient Express into my DVD player.

This is the 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic novel, featuring her famous detective, Hercule Poirot. The movie carried a similarly elite pedigree. It was directed by Sidney Lumet, and boasted an all-star cast including Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman (who, oddly, won an Oscar for her role here), Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Michael York.

It all seemed to me a worthwhile endeavor, even though the solution to the Orient Express mystery is fairly widely known -- including to me. (If you somehow happen not to know, consider yourself lucky. And keep reading. I won't be revealing anything here.)

It turns out that operating on a higher level than the particulars of the mystery itself were the members of that exceptional cast. It's an incredibly character driven piece, and many of them get their moments to shine. Albert Finney is especially good as the lead detective; if there was one acting Oscar destined to be handed out for this movie, it should have gone to him. It's a grand performance, strangely quirky while somehow simultaneously credible.

But the adaptation felt a little long-winded and awkward at times, particularly in the opening act. A long 20 minutes passes before the train even departs, much of that spent on a long series of bad introductions to the characters. While I appreciate the necessity of setting up the suspects before the movie begins in earnest, little is done to distinguish one character from another; they all march in across a crowded platform as spoiled rich people looking down on the desperate locals. If so many of the characters weren't embodied by recognizable actors, you'd have a hard time telling them apart until Poirot's questioning of them begins in the second act.

But that second act is quite well done. The movie could easily have become bogged down in an hour of one interrogation scene after another, but director Lumet keeps the pace tight. It only lags again at the end, when the group is all assembled for the revelation of the mystery. And perhaps that only seemed to slow down to me because of my knowledge of what that revelation would be. I must confess, the eerie blue lighting used in the scene where we actually see the murder being committed is effective and unsettling.

Overall, I'd take the high and low marks of the film and average them out to a place that just creeps above the line for a B-. Perhaps it would be better still to read the original novel itself, but watching this film adaptation isn't too bad either.