MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)
D: Sidney Lumet ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
Albert Finney, Martin Balsam, Richard Widmark,
Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Perkins, Lauren Bacall,
Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York,
John Gielgud, Jacqueline Bisset, Wendy Hiller
This starts out with a dozen characters, all played by famous movie stars, boarding a train in Istanbul, bound for Paris and Calais. One of them is nasty old Richard Widmark, who very quickly turns up dead, the victim of a heavy sedative and multiple stab wounds. With the train stuck in a Balkan snowdrift, the owner of the railroad (Martin Balsam) enlists his old friend and fellow passenger Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) to question the suspects and solve the case before the coach reaches Prague. It's all a bit over the top, from the posh production values to Finney's fussy performance, but it's over the top done real well, with elegant star turns by just about everybody. By the time the mystery's solved and each actor takes what amounts to a curtain call before the end credits, you half expect Widmark to come back from the dead for a final bow, too.
Sidney Lumet
(1924-2011)
