Murder On The Orient Express

Murder On The Orient Express

Travel to a period where women donned short hairs, styled and pinned wavy hair, wore veils on hats, pulled on full-length tweeds, prints, knits, and floor-length furs —and you've wound up in a movie set to a bygone era.  During the bygone era, the train motions to a steam engine by the burnt coals that fuels the main engine room.  It departs from Istanbul station headed to the Alps.  A detective played by Sir Kenneth Branagh and the passengers are played by all-star casts from movies:  Dame Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, William Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Daisy Ridley (from the last Star Wars).  If the full-star cast fails to draw you in, then Agatha Christie's mystery will.  (I've read the book as a teen.  The story is unusual for its climatic ending.)  

A murder disrupts the train route and detective Poirot questions and investigates the twelve remaining passengers.  It is that who dun it story.  Well, what is the answer?  You've got to watch the movie!  It's not who you think it is —Christie wrote this story with an original ending that had not happened before.  And readers, audiences too like fresh, original takes to stories where premise has not been reused. 

Murder On The Orient Express

      

By day, passengers on board were en route to Black Sea,

And by night at its depths, the train in the valleys of the Alps,

At the depths of the valleys in the mountains and in the deep,

Out of the flurries, creamy puffs fell leisurely on the Alps,

And the sky lessened, dimmed, together with the dusky eve,

A chilly crawl darkened the night, events unfold in the series,

One, the smoldering smoke at its utmost; wreathed up in the sky,

Two, roaring through the tracks, train came to a blare— shrills, shrieks,

Three, suddenly, the snow avalanche slumped down the beeline,

At a halt, the stranded train was at a time,

The night at an eclipse, up against the sunless ring,

Lady donned a silk kimono, ran down the sleeping cars,

Knock on a man’s coach, the conductor heard an eerie shriek,

Detective breached his door, veered out of the pass,

Came down like a colorless accident which transpired,

Thus the night sums up proofs, tot up to a heap,

Bloodied, open stab wounds, a murdered man rise,

Who murdered the man, which of the passengers in the car?

Ah, the detective opened the case to solve the maze,

A handkerchief, a silk kimono, a watch stopped-in-time,

More than a piece, how do you solve the case?

Tally ‘em up— some alike, some dislike—in more than one way,

Can more than one culprit be in this chain line?

Detective put his wits to work and deems,

Snuff out what baffles in the complex maze,

Unravels the riddle first-to-last,

Bridging the gaps, he gathers, a work mass to the sea,

Unquestionably, all the passengers band hand-in-hand,

Just then, the train arrives at the terminal, the sun sinks,

Sinks in the sky, stain of blood wash, whispers of lemon-saffron last.