May. 30, 2003 - 6:47 pm
nominated for 6 Academy Awards and boasting a star-studded cast is...one of the worst films i've seen this year. i think it was initially the cast which attracted me to this. i mean i love both Albert Finney and Lauren Bacall, and there are some other awesome names in this. that didn't help though. it's supposed to be a classic "whodunnit" film/story (written by the great Agatha Christie no less), but it ends up being almost comical in its badness. did they try too hard? it looks that way.
the whole thing takes place on a train called The Orient Express around 1930. a famous mafia crook gets murdered and a great Belgian detective (Finney) just happens to be on the train along with everyone else. it turns out basically everyone on the train happens to be tied to him in some way or another so of course it's confusing trying to figure out why one of them would have killed him over another. and if you stay to see the idiotic end, be prepared for the biggest cop-out of all time.
i thought most everyone's performances in this were very fake. and these are almost all amazing actors, so i'm going to blame the director. that's Sidney Lumet. oh no, i just looked at his filmography and it appears that i have another of his films checked out from the library right now. we'll see how that goes. chalk another one up to the terrible director of The Wiz (1978).
so i'll say not only is the story bad here, but pretty much everything else is as well. i can't believe they were able to pull out so many Oscar nominations for this. and Ingrid Bergman even won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. i thought her performance, in addition to everyone else's, was very forced and flawed. the only good thing i can say about this is that it does have a great performance from Albert Finney. i didn't even realize it was him for the first 10 minutes of the film. but unless you're mad about Albert Finney, i suggest you stay away from the Orient Express. it's more painful than murder.