Film

Murder on the Orient Express

Kenneth Branagh directs and mustaches his way through Agatha Christie's classic locked-carriage puzzle, trapping a train full of movie stars with a corpse and a blizzard. It's opulent, theatrical, and unhurried — more interested in mood, moral weight, and Poirot's own reckoning with justice than in pure plot mechanics. Good for a cosy evening if you want handsome production design and a starry ensemble rather than a breathless twist machine.

TMDb rating6.7

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Knives Out2019

The whodunit reinvented with real wit and a genuinely satisfying mechanism — funny, twisty, and stuffed with actors clearly having a blast. The gold standard for modern ensemble mystery.

But Its irreverence and pace are the opposite of Orient Express's stateliness; if you wanted slow and grand, this feels almost impatient by comparison.

Knives Out poster

Death on the Nile2022

Branagh and his mustache return for another lavish Christie puzzle, this time on a boat, with the same painterly visuals and brooding Poirot backstory.

But Critically it landed softer than Orient Express, and the tabloid baggage around its cast distracted from the film for a lot of viewers.

Death on the Nile poster

Gosford Park2001

Robert Altman's country-house ensemble is Christie's world seen through a sharper, sadder lens — class, servants, secrets, and a murder almost incidental to the human drama.

But The mystery is deliberately underplayed; if you came for a puzzle to solve, you'll find social satire instead.

Gosford Park poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

12 Angry Men1957

Poirot's final reckoning is really a question about whether the law and justice are the same thing — this film spends ninety minutes inside exactly that argument, with no detective to resolve it for you.

A single jury room, one piece of evidence at a time, and a slow unraveling of certainty — one of cinema's tightest, most morally serious dramas.

But There's no murder to solve here and no exotic setting — just relentless argument in one room, which some will find claustrophobic rather than gripping.

12 Angry Men poster
More like this (8)

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery2022

Rian Johnson's sequel doubles down on spectacle, star power and clever misdirection while keeping the genuine fondness for the genre's rules.

But Its satire of tech-bro excess is very of-the-moment, which may date it faster than more classical mysteries.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery poster

Clue1985

A gleeful, quotable farce that takes the closed-room murder-mystery furniture and turns it into pure slapstick chaos with a killer ensemble cast.

But If you want your mystery played straight and handsome, this cheerful demolition job might feel like a betrayal of the genre's dignity.

Clue poster

A Haunting in Venice2023no page yet

Branagh's third Poirot outing swaps opulence for gothic unease, leaning into ghost-story atmosphere while keeping the detective's core moral questions intact.

But It's moodier and slower than Orient Express, with less starpower and more shadow — a deliberate tonal departure some found alienating.

Evil Under the Sun1982

Peter Ustinov's warmer, funnier Poirot solves a beach-resort murder in sun-drenched, disco-adjacent style — a lighter but no less clever entry in the classic Christie canon.

But The pace is stagey and the humour broad; it's charming rather than gripping, and the 80s sheen won't suit everyone.

Evil Under the Sun poster

And Then There Were None2015no page yet

This BBC miniseries strips Christie's plotting down to something genuinely bleak and suspenseful, with no detective to save anyone from the mounting dread.

But It's considerably darker and crueler than Orient Express — less drawing-room puzzle, more slow-motion nightmare.

Sherlock Holmes2009

A starry, handsomely mounted detective romp with a magnetic lead performance and a plot built on deduction, disguise and clever reveals.

But It trades Christie's melancholy for action-adventure swagger, so the tone shift is considerable if you wanted something more contemplative.

Sherlock Holmes poster

Rashomon1950

Orient Express is built on a train car of suspects each giving a slightly-off account of themselves; Rashomon takes that same idea of unreliable witness and makes it the entire film, decades before Christie's structure became a genre staple.

Kurosawa's landmark tells one crime through four contradictory accounts, each self-serving, each partly true — a masterclass in how testimony bends around guilt.

But It's in Japanese, from 1950, and structurally repetitive by design — patience with ambiguity is required, not optional.

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Murder by Death1976

It's the trashy, gag-filled inverse of everything Orient Express plays straight — the same locked-room furniture, the same detective archetypes, but staged purely for laughs instead of gravitas.

A gloriously silly spoof gathering thinly disguised parodies of every famous fictional detective — Poirot included — into one country house for a joke-a-minute demolition of the genre.

But The humour is broad, dated in places, and entirely unconcerned with the dignity Branagh's version takes so seriously.

Murder by Death poster

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