I watched Kenneth Branagh´s rendition of Orient Express Agatha Christie classic couple of years ago and I must admit, although the movie had stellar line-up and promising to be a nice enjoyable experience, I felt disappointed and the movie was absolutely nothing to remember. Nice to see, but you forget it instantly after watching it.

Now, I was surprised how Branagh directed a ‘sequel’ which is loose word, having a new story, only incorporating character of legendary detective Hercule Poirot again and being a rendition of another great novel and I still remember the tv movie with awesome Peter Ustinov in the role of Poirot. He is still for me the best Poirot, although David Suchet played him decently in tv series. So, I was surprised how low can you go with this one. Starting with action in WWI? WTF? Explaining why Poirot wears his pride mustache?! The story moves from the mud drenched trenches to Egypt, where our hero enjoys his boat cruise along with newly wedded couple of rich heiress and her husband. Then murders start to happen and it is up to Poirot to discover and bring murderer to justice. Hmmm. The story is far from the novel and if you are into that novel, you will be angry for all the changes made in this movie. Also, line-up is again stellar, but only Gal Gadot was up to the task and I felt sorry and I was into her character and could relate to her somehow. Kenneth Branagh as Poirot just doesn´t fit to me, he somehow has no chemistry with character, somehow just becomes a parody of himself.

There is absolutely no tension in two thirds of the movie and it is just too long with to much slow parts when you await for the first murder to happen and that things somehow start evolving into crime story. I understand that they somehow tried to build up relations between key characters but that just did not work for me. The ending was somehow predictable and although they imagined it as kinda twist it was not really a surprise.

Conclusion: Just poor and it did not work for me.

Tension/Story: 3/10

Acting: 5/10 (Gal Gadot)