The ABC Murders

An excellent production in terms of photography and direction but it wavers in the overall writing and what ends up being stunt casting. Malkovich is barely trying to play Poirot as we know the character because he knows better than to imitate Ustinov or Suchet. So if this wasn't billed as Christie or Poirot it would probably have gotten a better response although it probably wouldn't have been made then.

Since I am not familiar with this particular Christie story I came into it with a different viewpoint. The three episodes are very well thought out until the last episode where it gets all muddled and it seems sort of pointless. Malkovich is mostly playing Malkovich which can be interpreted as acting laziness but he is so good at it, it could be forgiven if this wasn't supposed to be an older Poirot. If this was a PBS Masterpiece Theater mystery offering with a new character it would be all very entertaining but that's it.

I have very mixed feelings - on one side I like the very dark Scandinavian-mystery-like tone of the movie, but the epic fail with the impersonation of Poirot (or the casting of John Malkovich maybe?) is just ridiculous. Hercules Poirot is literally the most known character with his special moustache, egg like head and snobby posh behaviour I have seen none of that. RUpert Grint being here is completely unneccessary - such a bland character. Um, no.

Thanks to David Suchet, people have a specific ideal for Hercule Poirot. He must be arrogant and suave. He must be calm and unruffled, like a deaf partridge. And he must be above all of the petty little squabbles around him. Because he is Poirot.

To be fair, this is also the Hercule Poirot that Agatha Christie designed.

But this is not the Hercule Poirot that Sarah Phelps wrote. If she had gotten the character of Poirot right, I could have overlooked the unfortunate hyper-sexuality, but she didn't, she got him wrong. There has never been a more depressed, morose, or tragic incarnation of Poirot than the one in this miniseries. Now, I could blame John Malkovich, but he did not write the screenplay. Therefore, not his fault. It's not his fault that Sarah Phelps decided to rewrite Poirot's history and turn him into a decades old liar. That offended me the most. The very idea of Poirot lying about his history is even more preposterous than the fabricated background she created for him.

So no. Alas, no. If she'd gotten Poirot right, like I said, the other millstones could have been overlooked and I might have rated a 7 or 8. But when the screenplay writer shows no respect for the origins of a literary character and its creator, that's when I get off the boat.

Rightly or wrongly this was a story inspired by the original Agatha Christie novel rather than the story itself. Yes it was very different BUT I still found it very watchable. I watched it over 3 consecutive nights and wanted to watch to the end despite knowing 'who dunnit'. I was intrigued to find out about the demons Poirot was wrestling with from his past. It was a tad overlong though, I think two episodes with less padding might have been better, and why they didn't just make something similar with a new detective we didn't know is unfathomable as they made it almost unrecognisable anyway. It would have worked just as well as I thought John Malkovich was very good.

I wish I could give it a negative rating. I forced myself to watch the whole thing. I kept waiting for it to improve. It didn't. It was depressing, both in tone and visually. I had to keep turning up the brightness on my phone just to have a clue to what had been filmed. After I pushed myself through it, I had to watch the 1992 version to cleanse my palate. I will also search my bookshelves for the book and really get back into the story. Agatha Christie was a genius. I've read all of her books. If this had been my first introduction to Poirot, I would never had read any more.