Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Kenneth Branagh, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rosę Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright
Screenwriters: Michael Green (screenplay), Agatha Christie (based upon the novel by)
Whilst on vacation in Egypt in 1937, famed detective Hercule Poirot is invited to join a wedding party on a boat trip on the Nile. With tensions and jealousies running high, a killer strikes, whereupon Poirot must (yet again) investigate the murder and solve the crime.
Based Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name, Death on the Nile, in the vein of many a great murder mystery, brings together an ensemble cast to play a host of inter-connected characters, all of whom have dubious loyalties that must be untangled in order for Poirot to solve his latest case. And yet, despite dealing with a web of death and deceit, perhaps the most intriguing mystery of the movie is simply the mystery of the dedicated screen time.
Poirot’s moustache gets a more detailed introduction than some of the characters do, and it takes over an hour for the first murder to occur. The sleuthing seems to happen on fast forward, leaving little satisfaction on the investigative front.
In effect, despite being a murder mystery, the actual solving of the case takes a back seat to the build up. Superfluous details often pull an unnecessary amount of focus. Moustache origins and excessively long party scenes (featuring endless amounts of champagne) notwithstanding, many a conversation is had surrounding Poirot’s own love life (or lack thereof it), with Branagh clearly wanting to flesh out his leading character as much as possible. While providing more insight into the character’s backstory is beneficial in many respects—in this case, it does serve to make Poirot less of the detached enigma that he was in the first film—the manner in which the details were slotted in to the film was, at times, heavy handed and mildly jarring, and as a result, often stalled the pacing more than it served the story.
In creating the sequel to his 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, Branagh obviously sought to go as big and extravagant as possible. Sweeping camera shots set up scenes, dresses drip with sequins, champagne flows; there’s a Gatsby-esque level of shallow decadence to the whole shenanigan reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film The Great Gatsby. While all the splash and splendour does its job in highlighting that yes, ok, the heiress is (quite possibly) richer than the queen, as this set up goes on and on, watching the movie quickly devolves into a waiting game of ‘come on, when is the murder going to occur.’
Along with the waiting game comes the puzzle of keeping everyone and their motives and connections to each other straight. We get a mix of accents—including, but not limited to, French, British and American. Branagh goes for gold, chewing up the scenery in front of the camera as Poirot, looking yet more comfortable in the role than in his previous outing as the titular character. Gal Gadot, as Linnet Ridgeway, once again takes on the role of glamorous, mysterious woman, although this time she adds ‘excessively rich’ to the equation. She pulls it off, but it’s by no means a stretch, or an addition to the repertoire. Armie Hammer also appears in a key role as Simon Doyle, unfortunately saddling the film with a heavy cloud of controversy.
With so much focus placed on reminding the audience just how glamorous and rich, rich, rich Gadot’s character is, many of the other supporting characters fall by the wayside. A number of guests get left on the periphery, lacking enough screen time to show much in the way of depth or personality, afforded only the bare minimum to convey their motivations and relations to the others on the boat. Rose Leslie’s Louise Bourget and Ali Fazel’s Andrew Katchadourian in particular, could have been much better served with an extra scene or two.
Perhaps its competition does it no favours; had this film come out a few years earlier, maybe it would have shone as much as the over-the-top extravagance seemed to be pulling for, however the bar for murder mysteries has been raised in recent years thanks to Rian Johnson’s Knives Out (2019).
That being said, Death on the Nile is by no means a bad watch. While slow to start, the film has plenty of strengths; it is more self confident than its predecessor Murder on the Orient Express, more is revealed about Poirot’s character to the credit of the series, and once the story picks up, intrigue inevitably grows as the tangled web unfolds on screen.
Death on the Nile has its problems, but pacing issues, cast controversies and a curiously excessive moustache fascination aside, built upon the foundations of a strong source material, the film is a serviceable (and undeniably splashy) addition to the murder mystery film genre.
