| Murder on the Orient Express | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Carl Schenkel |
| Produced by | Marion Rosenberg |
| Written by | Stephen Harrigan |
| Starring | Alfred Molina Meredith Baxter Leslie Caron Peter Strauss |
| Music by | Christopher Franke |
| Cinematography | Rex Maidment |
| Distributed by | Ardustry Home Entertainment LLC |
| Release date(s) | April 22, 2001 |
| Running time | 100 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Murder on the Orient Express is a 2001 made-for-television movie, based on the 1934 novel by Agatha Christie, featuring Hercule Poirot. This version is set in the present day and has a smaller cast than the novel or 1974 film had. The original music score was composed by Christopher Franke. The film's tagline is: "Agatha Christie's whodunit speeds into the twenty-first century."
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Plot summary
Hercule Poirot is travelling on the Orient Express. While on the journey, Poirot meets a very close friend Bouc, who works for the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. The train is stopped when a landslide blocks the line on the second night out from Istanbul, and American millionaire Samuel Edward Ratchett is found stabbed to death the next morning. Since no footprints are visible around the train and the doors to the other cars were locked, it seems that the murderer must still be among the passengers in Ratchett's car. Poirot and Bouc work together to solve the case. They are aided by Pierre Michel, the middle-aged French conductor of the car. A key to the solution is Ratchett's revealed involvement in the Armstrong tragedy in America several years earlier, in which a baby was kidnapped and then murdered. (The fictitious Armstrong case was apparently inspired by the real-life kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby son.)
Cast
- Alfred Molina .... Hercule Poirot
- Meredith Baxter .... Mrs. Caroline Hubbard
- Leslie Caron .... Sra. Alvarado
- Amira Casar .... Helena von Strauss
- Nicolas Chagrin .... Pierre Michel
- Tasha de Vasconcelos .... Vera Rossakoff
- David Hunt .... Bob Arbuthnot
- Adam James .... William MacQueen
- Dylan Smith .... Tony Foscarelli
- Peter Strauss .... Mr. Samuel Ratchett
- Fritz Wepper .... Wolfgang Bouc
- Kai Wiesinger .... Philip von Strauss
- Natasha Wightman .... Mary Debenham
Other versions
- Murder on the Orient Express was also a 1974 film based on the same book.
