Death on the Nile

This boat has been sink­ing for a long time now. Ken­neth Branagh’s sec­ond out­ing as Agatha Christie’s fussy Bel­gian detec­tive Her­cule Poirot was ini­tial­ly sched­uled for a Decem­ber 2020 release, but plagued by pan­dem­ic delays and the prob­lem­at­ic actions of var­i­ous key cast mem­bers, it awk­ward­ly shuf­fles into cin­e­mas now, some three years after film­ing, with what­ev­er the oppo­site of a fan­fare is.

Even so, Ken­neth Branagh was nev­er going to let a pan­dem­ic hold him down. Death on the Nile fol­lows his inex­plic­a­bly suc­cess­ful mem­oir-dra­ma Belfast, which rides high on a raft of Oscar nom­i­na­tions this week. Let it nev­er be said the man doesn’t have range; he can make a dog’s din­ner out of just about any genre.

There’s a par­al­lel between Belfast and Death on the Nile in Branagh’s deci­sion to pro­vide a pro­logue this time around, shot in the same flat black and white as Belfast, in which a young Poirot demon­strates his strate­gic skills on the bat­tle­field of World War One, sav­ing his com­rades from cer­tain death, only to end up in a war hos­pi­tal due to a mor­tar bomb inci­dent. His face is bad­ly scarred; his fiancée sug­gests, some­what insen­si­tive­ly, he can grow a moustache.

Years lat­er, fol­low­ing the events of Mur­der on the Ori­ent Express, Poirot trav­els to Egypt for a hol­i­day, to have a gan­der at the Sphinx and eat some Jaf­fa cakes. He hap­pens upon Bouc (Tom Bate­man) an old friend, trav­el­ling with his moth­er Euphemia (Annette Ben­ing) as part of a wed­ding par­ty, which the world-famous detec­tive is invit­ed to join. Heiress Lin­net Ridge­way (Gal Gadot) is hon­ey­moon­ing with new beau Simon Doyle (Armie Ham­mer), whom she lured away from her friend Jacque­line (Emma Mack­ie) in a whirl­wind romance.

They have assem­bled their near­est and dear­est in Egypt for cel­e­bra­tions, includ­ing Lynette’s Com­mu­nist god­moth­er Marie Van Schuyler (Jen­nifer Saun­ders) and her trav­el­ling com­pan­ion Mrs. Bow­ers (Dawn French), her maid Louise Bour­get (Rose Leslie) her ex-fiancé Linus Windle­sham (Rus­sell Brand), her cousin-slash-accoun­tant Andrew Katchadouri­an (Ali Fazal), school­friend Ros­alie (Leti­tia Wright) and her jazz singer aunt Salome Otter­bourne (Sophie Okone­do). Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the hap­py cou­ple, they are being trailed by a bit­ter Jacque­line, who is – under­stand­ably – a bit angry her best friend ran off with her boyfriend.

It takes a rather long time to get to the actu­al death on the Nile; 70 min­utes, in fact. Most of the time pri­or is spent estab­lish­ing all the key play­ers, which would be fine if any one of them was remote­ly inter­est­ing, but the hap­py cou­ple are insuf­fer­able to the point the promise of someone’s immi­nent death seems quite wel­come, and their assort­ed guests too numer­ous to real­ly make for a tan­ta­lis­ing ensem­ble (as fun as it is see­ing French and Saun­ders shacked up as a pair of lat­er-in-life les­bians). So, we’re left to watch Poirot bum­ble around the ship, awk­ward­ly flirt­ing with Salome and reflect­ing on his own doomed romance some decades prior.

Per­haps Branagh’s Poirot would be more com­pelling if he could make a deci­sion about how to play him. While the gold stan­dard remains David Suchet’s exact­ing, per­pet­u­al­ly haughty tele­vi­sion ver­sion, Branagh’s feels clos­er to a slight­ly more com­pe­tent Inspec­tor Clouse­au. It’s strange; Branagh is a charis­mat­ic actor, but his Poirot is devoid of all personality.

This lack of iden­ti­ty extends past char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion to the very film itself. There’s a sheen to Death on the Nile that makes every­thing appear com­put­er gen­er­at­ed and arti­fi­cial. No care has been giv­en to a sense of time or place; the exot­ic set­ting has all the depth of a green screen back­ground while the cin­e­matog­ra­phy is flat and shal­low. It’s as though the film was made by an algo­rithm, specif­i­cal­ly designed to tar­get BBC Two view­ers watch­ing tele­vi­sion at four in the after­noon dur­ing the No Man’s Land peri­od between Christ­mas and New Year’s Day; noth­ing too excit­ing, noth­ing too chal­leng­ing, just some famil­iar faces and a bit of CGI sunshine.

But Christie’s work – full of wit and clever lit­tle twists – deserves bet­ter than Branagh seems intent on giv­ing it. His detec­tive sto­ries are flat­tened out, devoid of per­son­al­i­ty or mean­ing. This seems a greater sin than being out­right awful, which at least can be, in a way, enter­tain­ing. The soul­less, offen­sive­ly pedes­tri­an Death on the Nile offers not even plea­sure of the ​‘so bad it’s good’ vari­ety. It’s sim­ply a waste of everyone’s time, cast, crew and audi­ence alike.

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