Metacritic reviews

Like the lovely, extravagantly overemphasized nineteen-thirties' costumes and production designed by Tony Walton, Murder on the Orient Express is much less a literal re-creation of a type of thirties movie than an elaborate and witty tribute that never for a moment condescends to the subject.

No matter how good the performer you can’t escape Christie’s leisurely approach to characterisation — simple concoctions of quirk, guilt and red herring. But Lumet is having loads of credible fun with the formula, keeping up a genuine sense of claustrophobia in this isolated railway car surrounded by crisp white snow.

Murder on the Orient Express is a splendidly entertaining movie of the sort that isn’t made anymore: It’s a classical whodunit, with all the clues planted and all of them visible, and it’s peopled with a large and expensive collection of stars.

Elegant and stylish in the best Agatha Christie tradition--a thoroughly entertaining if poky whodunit.

This all-star version of an Agatha Christie antiquity promises to be a sumptuous spread, and so it is, but not as tasty as one had hoped.

When the plot is this much of a lark, it’s in need of far lighter execution than this.

Murder on the Orient Express falls down so badly as escapist entertainment that it is as if it were designed to prove the proposition that movies and mysteries don't mix.