Death on the Nile Death on the Nile

M - Mystery & thriller/Crime, 2h 7m

Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot's Egyptian vacation aboard a glamorous river steamer turns into a terrifying search for a murderer when a picture-perfect couple's idyllic honeymoon is tragically cut short.

Set against an epic landscape of sweeping desert vistas and the majestic Giza pyramids, this tale of unbridled passion and incapacitating jealousy features a cosmopolitan group of impeccably dressed travelers, and enough wicked twists and turns to leave audiences guessing until the final, shocking denouement.

Death on the Nile reunites the filmmaking team behind 2017's global hit Murder on the Orient Express, and stars five-time Academy Award nominee Kenneth Branagh as the iconic detective Hercule Poirot.

He is joined by an all-star cast of suspects, including: Tom Bateman, four-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Saunders and Letitia Wright.

Death on the Nile is written by Michael Green, adapted from Christie's novel, and is produced by Kenneth Branagh, p.g.a., Judy Hofflund, p.g.a., Ridley Scott, Mark Gordon, Simon Kinberg and Kevin J. Walsh, with Matthew Jenkins, James Prichard and Matthew Prichard serving as executive producers.

OFFICIAL TRAILER

REVIEWS

TOMATOMETER 68%
AUDIENCE SCORE 82%

M, 127 minutes, in cinemas Reviewed by SANDRA HALL

When it comes to high camp - as it often does with Agatha Christie adaptations - Kenneth Branagh faces tough competition in taking on the role of Hercule Poirot for a second time.

Among others, Peter Ustinov and David Suchet have been there before him, and Suchet has been acclaimed for setting a new standard with his interpretation of the Belgian detective at his most pernickety. As well as adopting a particularly pointed example of the waxed moustache, Suchet achieved a style so impeccable that Poirot's face and figure gleam almost as brightly as his patent leather shoes.

But in Death on the Nile, Branagh's follow-up to his version of Murder on the Orient Express, he takes a different tack, softening Poirot and making him pretty well human. Christie's original is not immune to romance - he has been known to fall in love - but I doubt he's ever experienced the profound passion the young Poirot feels in the film's black-andwhite prologue, set in Belgium during World War I. What's more, we learn that the moustache - luxuriant enough to suggest a small furry animal has come to rest on his top lip - has a poignant reason for existing.

This Poirot also shows a tentative interest in Sophie Okonedo's blues singer, Salome Otterbourne, a guest on the Karnak, the Nile river boat where the film's murders occur.

The last big-screen adaptation of the novel was Richard Guillermin's in 1978 with Ustinov and a glittering supporting cast led by three of cinemas grande dames - Bette Davis, Maggie Smith and Angela Lansbury.

Swathed in lame and sequins and hung with several kilos of clanking jewellery, Lansbury played Salome, who was, as Christie wrote her, a romance novelist, not a singer. Davis and Smith chipped away at one another in a waspish double act as Marie Van Schuyler, an American heiress, and Miss Bowers, her discontented companion.

For this version, Salome has retained some of the lame but lost the airs and graces, while a dressed-down Van Schuyler and Bowers are portrayed by Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French, being slightly serious. Van Schuyler, despite her money, has become a selfdescribed communist.

Even so, there's no shortage of glamour. Unlike its predecessor, the film was not shot in Egypt, but in Morocco, and the Karnak was built in a British studio. But you'll have no problem in imagining you're gliding down the Nile in luxurious, if perilous, circumstances.

The ship's guests have been assembled to take part in the honeymoon of a pair of charismatic newlyweds, Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot), a beautiful heiress, and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer), her handsome but penniless husband. All is well until Linnet is pushed to the point of hysteria by the presence of Simon's former fiancee , Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey).

Branagh has refrained from decorating the action with too many high-camp embellishments. French and Saunders are permitted one or two comic flourishes and there are plenty of histrionics, but he also appreciates the jolt of power that can come from a fine actor sounding as if they mean what they're saying.

Okonedo delivers on that score. So does an imperious Annette Bening, cast as the overprotective mother of Poirot's friend and helper Bouc (Tom Bateman).

While the gamble Branagh takes in disinterring Poirot's long-neglected sensitive side may be regarded as sacrilege by some, I think it works. Poirot has a yearning heart. Christie, who is said to have disliked him intensely by the end of their relationship, would have been astonished.

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