Death on the Nile (2022)
(Disney Streaming, April 2022) Are we so starved for a murder mystery that even an average entry in the genre would earn attention and a mild recommendation? Well, yes – and while there’s plenty to say about Death on the Nile’s faults, the result is still a watchable, even occasionally charming piece of old-school mystery executed with lavish modern means. Second in a series of Hercules Poirot films from writer-director-star Kenneth Branagh adapting Agatha Christie’s novels, it takes Poirot and an ensemble cast of characters up and down the Nile for a series of murders on the honeymoon cruise of a rich couple. If you’re familiar with the 1970s version of the story, you may still have a few surprises here: An added framing device has been added to give more depth to Poirot (largely wasted, as it’s not really important, and the moustache bit stolen from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp doesn’t make visual sense); some characters have been combined and, most strikingly, the visual polish of the film has been boosted by near-omnipresent CGI effects. Branagh is still quite good as Poirot, but the ensemble cast has its ups and downs. Gal Gadot gets the aristocratic thing down pat and Sophie Okonedo is quite striking as a jazz singer, but the long delays between the film’s pre-Covid production and its post-peak-pandemic release mean that two performers had the time to get into dumb personal scandals along the way – While Armie Hammer’s role is small enough that we can ignore his cannibalistic fetish, I would have liked Letitia Wright’s performance had she not proven herself to be an anti-vax wackadoodle in the meantime. Still, even with its clunky moments and overlong running time, Death on the Nile at least gets the basics of an old-fashioned murder mystery right: the atmosphere (despite the unrealism of the CGI), the cast of interesting characters, the sense of a closed-off environment, the accumulating deaths, and the final confrontation with all the suspects (even if the film wrongly sees it as appropriate to have Poirot threaten everyone with a gun). Compared to the 1970s version, it’s both more visually interesting and more meandering. But in 2022, considering the regrettable death of murder mysteries (a hunger merely whetted by such successes as Knives Out and Murder on the Orient Express), even a mildly successful example of the genre such as Death on the Nile can be quite satisfying to watch. While there were doubts that such a film would lead to further sequels in the Disney portfolio, it now looks as if a third film is planned. Why not – especially if Branagh and Okonedo can be back for more.