4. Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet)
Gets Lost in the Shuffle Of: 12 Angry Men, Network, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict Boasting one of the greatest casts of all time (Connery, Bergman, Finney, Bacall, Regrave, and Perkins),
Murder on the Orient Express is a classy, riveting whodunnit brilliantly directed by Lumet. Intriguing, darkly humorous, and breathtakingly tantalizing to watch, it's easy to see how the film slips through the cracks when discussing Lumet's more popular work. Unlike
Dog Day Afternoon and
12 Angry Men, the movie keeps you restrained with more questions than answers, and while the actors are fantastic to watch back-and-forthing, no one tries to command a presence like Lumet is used to directing with the cast of
Network or Paul Newman in
The Verdict.
Murder is a fantastic little film that spirals in all kinds of wonderful directions, while managing to keep itself quite on track.
"Only by interrogating the other passengers could I hope to see the light, but when I began to question them, the light, as Macbeth would have said, thickened."