Murder on the Orient Express - 1971 Film

Murder on the Orient Express - 1971 Film

Murder on the Orient Express is a 2001 made-for-television movie, based on the 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, featuring Hercule Poirot. This version is set in the present day and has a smaller cast than the novel. The original music score was composed by Christopher Franke.

Murder on the Orient Express Plot

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 the United States 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 boy.)

Murder on the Orient Express Cast

Alfred Molina as Hercule Poirot
Meredith Baxter as Mrs. Caroline Hubbard
Leslie Caron as Sra. Alvarado
Amira Casar as Helena von Strauss
Nicolas Chagrin as Pierre Michel
Tasha de Vasconcelos as Vera Rossakoff
David Hunt as Bob Arbuthnot
Adam James as William MacQueen
Dylan Smith as Tony Foscarelli
Peter Strauss as Mr. Samuel Ratchett
Fritz Wepper as Wolfgang Bouc
Kai Wiesinger as Philip von Strauss
Natasha Wightman as Mary Debenham

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