Review: Murder on the Orient Express Wobbles Off the Tracks

Kenneth Branagh may be an uneven director, but at least he knows what a film should be. The first 30 minutes or so of his Murder on the Orient Express are promising: There's a beautifully shot preamble, set near Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, in which the outlandishly mustachioed perfectionist detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) waits patiently as a local boy attempts to procure two precisely matched eggs for his breakfast.