This review probably contains spoilers that will utterly ruin your experience of the film.
Murder on the Orient Express is a bleak new documentary about everyone wanting to kill Johnny Depp. It is set on a train, but that hardly seems relevant, given most people would gladly murder the actor in any environment. This film comes on the back of his appearance in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in which he played a bleached chinchilla and made millions of Harry Potter fans mildly annoyed for three minutes.
Imagine being in an enclosed space with him for several hours, not being able to escape his wet dog scent and occasionally being flicked in the eye by his BP oil-drenched hair. You would definitely stick a fork in his neck. This is the scenario in which Murder on the Orient Express places actors such as Judi Dench, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfeiffer and Willem Dafoe, all of whom are visibly disgusted by his presence for the duration of the picture.
Kenneth Branagh presents the documentary, for some reason adopting a ridiculous Belgian accent and sporting a double-decker moustache. He attempts to remain impartial, but even he can’t help but be repulsed by Depp’s face, which looks like an Antonio Banderas mask stretched over Skeletor’s head.
As far as documentaries about killing celebrities go, Murder on the Orient Express ranks somewhere in the top 350, probably between The Passion of the Christ and Godzilla. It would have been much better had it addressed Depp’s performance in the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean, which outrageously saw him play a slightly more sober version of himself. But it makes up for this with a half-hour segment on him smuggling dogs up his anal cavity.
I got the overriding feeling that I have seen or read all of this before, and it was definitely better the first time around.