Murder On The Orient Express

Year: 1974
Category: Murder Mystery
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Albert Finney, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins and Vanessa Red grave.
Runtime: 128 min
Certification: USA/UK PG

The film is all about a group of international terrorists who have arranged a plenteous party for the rich strata of the society. It was a few days before the New Year. The invitees were brought from Paris to Istanbul. The host had intentions to squeeze a large sum of money from the grabby guests who mostly consisted of businessmen and celebrities. This was nothing but the onset of a trembling murder mystery.

The Story
The host of the party is an unknown person to the guests. But the guests don’t seem to be much worried about that as to why on earth are they invited for a free ride from Paris to Istanbul. And the covetous guests are in a mood to make some big business deals in this whole process. They are so engrossed in making their money that nobody could realize that the terrorists have seized the train just as they were out of Paris. But one of the passengers who was a famous American actor realizes that a waiter is missing. But he then never knew that all the waiters of the train have been killed.

On the journey Poirot (Albert Finney) comes to meet an old friend of his who works in Compagnis Internationale des wagons Lits. In Balkan the heavy snows catch hold of the train the very next morning, American millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett was found knifed to death. The time of murder seems to be after the jamming of snow and thus it was concluded that the murderer must be one of the passengers in Ratchet’s car. Then starts the investigation and Poirot, Bouc and Dr. Constantine take the dynamic initiative. But no one is out of the list of suspects.

The Suspects
Not a single person in the train was spared and thus the list of the suspected became quite long. Hector Mac Queen, a tall American young man who was Ratchet’s secretary and translator is the no.1 suspect. Then it was the victim’s attendant, Edward Masterman. Colonel Arbuthnot, played by Sean Connery was also a suspect who himself was a British Army Officer returning from India. Cyrus Hardman a very social animal who is a typewriter ribbon salesman is also among the suspects. And the rest of the suspect list is filled up by the names of various ladies like, Mary Debenham, Princess Dragomiroff, Hildegarde Schmidt, count Andrenyi, Gretta Ohlsson and Mrs. Hubbard.

Bombs Kill The Host
Lastly the passengers were fighting the terrorists and the bombs, which he had only kept in a compartment, which got detached from the rest of the train and was immediately blustered into pieces, killed the cunning creature.

Sean Connery again did his role with full sobriety and the audience liked him as nicely as ever.