75
Elegant and stylish in the best Agatha Christie tradition--a thoroughly entertaining if poky whodunit.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
10
Village Voice by Andrew Sarris
Murder on the Orient Express falls down so badly as escapist entertainment that it is as if it were designed to prove the proposition that movies and mysteries don't mix.
80
No matter how good the performer you can’t escape Christie’s leisurely approach to characterisation — simple concoctions of quirk, guilt and red herring. But Lumet is having loads of credible fun with the formula, keeping up a genuine sense of claustrophobia in this isolated railway car surrounded by crisp white snow.
60
The New Yorker by Pauline Kael
This all-star version of an Agatha Christie antiquity promises to be a sumptuous spread, and so it is, but not as tasty as one had hoped.
75
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Murder on the Orient Express is a splendidly entertaining movie of the sort that isn’t made anymore: It’s a classical whodunit, with all the clues planted and all of them visible, and it’s peopled with a large and expensive collection of stars.
90
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
Like the lovely, extravagantly overemphasized nineteen-thirties' costumes and production designed by Tony Walton, Murder on the Orient Express is much less a literal re-creation of a type of thirties movie than an elaborate and witty tribute that never for a moment condescends to the subject.