The Five Best Kenneth Branagh Movies of His Career

TVOM, 4 October 2019
By Tom

Kenneth Branagh is one of those actors that has been firmly ensconced within show business for a long time and yet is not known to every last person despite the depth to which his career has been seen to go. He’s a great and very professional actor and has taken his career in different directions that have seen him gain just as much success throughout the years. You could say that just like anyone else he’s had his missteps in making certain movies since honestly not everyone is going to make a perfect movie every time they step on screen. But apart from that he’s taken his lumps at the box office and has kept moving forward in an effort to create the current legacy he holds and will eventually leave behind whenever he chooses to retire or when he passes on. At this point you can easily imagine that once he’s gone a lot of people are going to remember him fondly. As of now though, he’s still a very popular and well-heeled actor and director.

Here are his five best movies.

5. Murder on the Orient Express

Gregory Wakeman of Metro is of the mind that Hercule Poirot will be seeing sequels after this one as has been done before, and it does seem as though that idea has been explored already as it seems that the famed detective has a movie planned around his exploits for 2020. This movie was centered around the death of an individual that, as it was eventually found, was actually deserving of his death, though Hercule is troubled by the fact that while justice needs to be served, the fact that so many participated in the same murder is enough to make him actually step away from the case altogether, which is of course out of character.

4. Dead Again

Rita Kempley of the Washington Post has the right of it when saying this was a tale of revenge and something that was a bit convoluted in a way that seems to make the viewer pay attention in a big way. There is a good deal of interest in this movie when it comes to the love story aspect, the obsession, and of course the overall idea that karma is a big part of what’s going on and seems to be following its own course up until the end. Some movies you watch because they’re going to be nothing but thrill and action, others you watch because they’re going to be much, much deeper and have something unique to say. This seems to lean more to the latter.

3. Hamlet

There’s a definite need for Hamlet to stay on as a legend within film lore and as a story that will continually draw in new admirers and those that seek to adapt it to the continual adaptation of pop culture. It might seem a bit dry and a little hard to adapt at times act for act, but at the same time Branagh managed to utilize it in a way that allowed him to continue his status as a legend. While some might think that the story is kind of boring the need to watch this movie from front to back and pay attention to the detail and nuance that the movie utilizes, thereby insuring that one gets the main point and the whole story in a way that makes it more appealing.

2. Dunkirk

Soutik Biswas of BBC made it clear that he believed that Dunkirk left out a good number of details that history recorded but the movie seemed to ignore. One thing that anyone should remember is that a movie is subject to what the director wants to show, and that even a historical piece is bound to have inaccuracies here and there in order to focus on the narratives that the director wants to push. It’s very true that Dunkirk did leave out a lot of detail and might have embellished a great deal of material, but at the same time the movie was created to entertain, not serve as a documentary to those that might still be around and can remember these furious times.

1. Henry V

The story of Henry V is one that is, as you would guess, something that deals with two very pretentious countries that are fully ready to do anything and everything to show their dominance and thereby insure that they are seen as the power they perceive themselves to be. Of course as history and pop culture has enjoyed showing throughout the years, France is depicted as being rather cowardly when pressed, despite the fact that they have a rich and very interesting culture that thankfully has never been eradicated. In matters of war however they seem to be pushovers when it comes to defending themselves. It might not be the outright truth, but the French seem to bend the knee pretty quickly.

Kenneth is without a doubt one of the best actors in show business.


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