The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D+
The idea of Kenneth Branagh directing and starring as Hercule Poirot in a series of films based on Agatha Christie’s novels sounds so brilliant on paper that the underwhelming results seem even more crushingly disappointing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of old-school murder mystery whodunits and, consequently, I’ve rarely been more frustrated with my unfulfilled desire to like something as I have been with Branagh’s adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and now Death on the Nile. While I thought that Orient Express was passable at best, I was looking forward to Death on the Nile because, being familiar with the source material and the prior film adaptation, I feel that Nile has the better mystery at its core. While Branagh avoids many of the mistakes of Orient Express, he comes up with many new mistakes and has turned Christie’s tight mystery into a lumbering, meandering slog. Never has murder been this dull.
This being a murder mystery, I’ll be light on plot details. Essentially, we are introduced to Simon (played by Armie Hammer) who has recently left his super hot fiancé Jackie (played by Emma Mackey) for her equally hot, and wealthy, friend named Linnet (played by Gal Gadot). Simon has a really tough life, I tell ya. So Simon and Linnet go traveling the world, as I guess rich people do, but they are followed around by Jackie because she is still hung up on the whole best-friend-stealing-her-fiancé thing. The happy trio make their way to a trip on the Nile and the boat’s passengers include none other than Hercule Poirot, who is hired to keep an eye on the increasingly-unstable Jackie. After we seemingly watch this boat trip in real time for about eight hours, Linnet is finally murdered and Poirot is on the case to identify the murderer.
I’ve always naturally assumed that Kenneth Branagh is an avid reader of my reviews and this film seems to partially confirm it. My primary criticism of Orient Express was that it eliminated vital background information from the beginning of the story. That omission basically made it impossible to solve the mystery and made it seem like Poirot was just pulling the solution out of his ass at the end of the movie. With Death on the Nile, Branagh seems to have taken my criticism a bit too much to heart and gone in the complete opposite direction. This film adds a new prologue that practically spells out the identity of the killers and makes the rest of the film feel like a tedious schlep toward the inevitable. I was joined by The Film Nurse and a friend for this movie and neither were familiar with the story, but both of them immediately knew the resolution about 15 minutes into the film because of this completely unnecessary sequence. Considering how Agatha Christie is known for tight plotting and meticulous attention to detail, it’s baffling that Branagh would deem it wise to alter the structure of her story in such a way.
Branagh did not, however, listen to my secondary criticism of Orient Express, which was the inclusion of superfluous scenes and sub-plots that add nothing but needless minutes to the running time. In addition to the aforementioned mystery-ruining prologue, there is actually an additional prologue to the prologue. This scene is a flashback that shows Poirot as a soldier in World War I and serves as an origin story for both his attention to detail and his mustache. Yes, his mustache apparently needed an origin story. What does this have to do with the plot? Not a goddamn thing. There are also various subplots involving Poirot investigating an interracial couple, Poirot falling in love with a black woman in a jazz club and a pair of passengers on the boat being revealed as a lesbian couple. What does any of this have to do with the plot? Not a goddam fucking thing. But, my fellow 2022 audience members, you can rest assured that this story now includes all of the bigotry and diversity issues that you demand be shoehorned into every narrative. We eventually return to that pesky murder mystery thing, but not until after we have gotten our demands for identity politics satisfied and thank god for that.
All of those painfully unneeded additions help with the running time, which goes for 2 hours and 7 minutes. That may seem like a reasonable length and, in fact, the superior film version of Death on the Nile from 1978 runs longer at 2 hours and 20 minutes. However, consider these points: 1. The original was 13 minutes longer, but didn’t include any of the additional prologues, epilogues and sub-plots that I mentioned and 2. The fucking murder doesn’t happen until over an hour into this murder mystery. The first hour or so feels like a travelogue with the world’s most boring people as they politely bicker about estate plans and generally just sit around looking nearly as bored as I was. It was as if the actors were told to just sit around and wait for the plot to start. Christie’s novels are always littered with interesting secondary characters, all of whom have interesting quirks and backstories. We get none of that here. There are a lot of ways to screw up an Agatha Christie adaptation, but it is a special kind of crime to make one this frigging dull.
I demand two things out of a murder mystery: a murder and a mystery. I don’t think that I’m being unreasonable here. Death on the Nile provides no mystery because it spells out the ending in the opening minutes and it doesn’t even provide a murder until the halfway point of its brutal running time. While I was initially excited by the prospect of this series of Christie adaptations, it’s become clear that Branagh doesn’t respect the material enough to let it stand on its own merits and seems to think that he can improve upon the plotting of the greatest mystery writer of all time. After only two films, I think it is time to give Hercule Poirot a rest. I always preferred the Miss Marple stories anyway.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_on_the_Nile_(2022_film)#/media/File:Death_on_the_Nile_(2020_film)_poster.png
