Man, this movie had a ton of famous people in it. It's a film adaptation of one of Agatha Christie's most famous stories starrring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Monsieur Poirot is called to London after solving a case in Turkey and boards the Orient Express in order to get there. One of the fellow passengers, named Ratchett (Richard Widmark) offers Poirot $15,000 to solve the mystery of who is sending him death threats, which Poirot declines with the beautiful line of "Mr. Ratchett, I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices. I take only such cases now as interest me, and to be frank, my interest in your case is dwindling."
Then the train gets stuck in Yugoslavia and Ratchett ends up murdered in the berth next to Poirot. Naturally, he has to solve the case quickly to avoid embarrassing his friend, the train line owner. Things get complicated when it turns out that Ratchett is an alias of a gangster named Cassetti, the man responsible for the kidnapping and death of a child named Daisy Armstrong, the daughter of American socialites.
(An allusion to the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1932.)
Not only was Cassetti responsible for Daisy's death, but also for the wave of misery which swamped the family afterwards: the mother miscarried a second child and died, the falsely accused maid threw herself out of a window, and the dad shot himself.
You may be wondering at this point why Mr. Poirot would bother solving the mystery since this guy obviously deserved what happened to him. And I would ask you, what is the point of having a detective on board if you won't let him detect? So, using ingenious methods and having an astonishing wealth of background information, he figures out whodunit.
Oh, come on, you didn't think I would spoil it for you, did you?
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