Death on the rail There's arguably not a lot to Agatha Christie's mysteries. She writes functional prose, sketches serviceable characters, delivers the occasional clever aphorism ("The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances"--which when you think about it sounds suspiciously like Arthur Conan Doyle).
But the plots were amazing: Rube Goldberg devices that whirred furiously intricately, accelerating till all fall away to finally reveal a beautiful simplicity ("I'd never have guessed!" is the common reaction, though a slap of the forehead will suffice). Christie's plots take to the theater stage (The Mousetrap, Witness for the Prosecution) and the big screen (Rene Clair's And Then There Were None--easily my favorite; and Sidney Lumet's 1974 Murder on the Orient Express) as if to the manner born; there's something about the spare (some would say 'thin') elegance of her fiction that renders it ready-made for translation to other media.
Now Branagh's version of Christie's murder masterpiece, about a retired Belgian detective named Hercule Poirot (played by the director himself: "Are kool Poirot--I do not slay ze lions mademoiselle") trapped on a snowbound train with over a dozen other suspicious types, played by an international cast of stars.
