Murder on the Orient Express

Sidney Lumet's "Murder on the Orient Express" is a meticulously crafted puzzle box from an era when filmmaking asked only that audiences follow the clues and marvel at the construction. The film contains multitudes, but none of them are progressive sensibilities. It is a 1974 adaptation of a 1934 novel, and it commits fully to being exactly that: a mystery thriller where an international cast boards a snowbound train and waits to be implicated. The female characters exist, as they do in the source material, but they exist in service of the plot rather than in service of any agenda.

The cast is diverse by accident of the source material's geography, not by design. Albert Finney's Poirot is the fulcrum around which everything rotates, and the supporting players, however distinguished, remain supporting. There is nothing here about representation, identity, or systemic anything. The film is concerned solely with murder, motive, and the mechanics of deduction. It is, in this sense, a film of almost aggressive indifference to cultural commentary.

The film treats its audience as intelligent enough to follow a complex narrative without instruction. There are no speeches about justice, no moments where the camera lingers to ensure we understand a character's significance, no subtext demanding interpretation. It is cinema as entertainment, operating in an entirely different register from the social consciousness that defines contemporary progressive filmmaking. One might argue this is the film's greatest strength, though that would be a separate review entirely.