As with Kenneth Branagh’s previous Agatha Christie adaptation, “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Death on the Nile” is an undeniably handsome, old-fashioned affair – a classic “locked room” murder mystery, set not on a snowbound train, as that 2017 film was, but on an equally photogenic river boat in Egypt, making its lazy way up the Nile.
A large chunk of the story, once again adapted by screenwriter Michael Green, takes place against the stunning backdrop of the Abu Simbel temples, where a cluster of well-dressed guests have gathered to celebrate the marriage of two pretty people (Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer), until someone gets killed. Make that several someones.
It’s the kind of destination wedding (and, quite frankly, the kind of movie) that nobody does anymore.
But Branagh and Green bring a few modern touches to Christie’s admittedly dusty 1937 source material, introducing a welcome racial diversity to the cast with Ali Fazal, Sophie Okonedo and Letitia Wright, the latter of whom plays the daughter of a Black blues singer (Okonedo) romantically involved with a white man (Tom Bateman reprising his role as Poirot’s louche young friend from “Orient Express”). Two other characters in the large ensemble – which contains enough convenient motives and Colonel Mustards, so to speak, to stock a couple of Clue games – also reveal themselves to be in a surprising, secret relationship, one not in the book.
From left: Ali Fazal, Letitia Wright and Sophie Okonedo in “Death on the Nile.” Rob Youngson/20th Century Studios
Branagh again does double duty as the eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, an obsessive-compulsive just this side of Tony Shalhoub’s private eye Adrian Monk. This being a 21st-century film, his character must also be a tiny bit of an action hero. But only a tiny bit. Poirot is not quite so revisionist as Robert Downey Jr.’s muscular, mixed-martial-artist version of Sherlock Holmes.
Set in 1937, “Nile” opens with a black-and-white prologue, taking place during World War I, that explains the origins of Poirot’s almost architectonic mustache, an engineering feat of human facial hair that rivals the Great Pyramid of Giza. It’s a modest digression, but it sets up a backstory about Poirot that deepens and complicates what little we know of his psyche (and his heart, which he’s often portrayed as not having).
As for the murder, “Nile,” like the paddleboat it’s set on, takes its sweet time getting there. (My notebook contains the marginal annotation “one hour!” next to some illegible scribbles about the circumstances of the crime, which precipitates a demonstration of Poirot’s legendary powers of observation and deduction. They are pleasurable to behold, in their own way, if a bit fustier than those of Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc in “Knives Out.”)
Although “Nile” would seem to have followed Branagh’s Oscar-buzzy “Belfast” with remarkable rapidity, filming actually began on this film in September 2019. (The release was originally scheduled for December 2020 but was subsequently delayed six times because of COVID.) In the intervening years, Hammer and Wright have become mired in controversy: Hammer for allegedly posting rape fantasies in text messages, and Wright for sharing an anti-vaccine video (since deleted). Hammer’s character in “Nile” has some scenes in which he displays a creepy hypersexuality, which in context comes across as especially unsavory.
But the acting company – which includes Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Rose Leslie, Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French – is, on the whole, generally solid. And the plot twist is a good one, if you haven’t read the book or seen the 1978 film.
Kenneth Branagh in “Death on the Nile.” Rob Youngson/20th Century Studios
Branagh, for his part, takes the larger-than-life Poirot, who carries a silver-handled cane and affects a theatrical fastidiousness – and makes him somehow smaller, if you will, delving as much into what the detective calls his “little gray cells” as his emotions. It’s a surprisingly intimate portrayal, in a tale that has two mysteries at its center: one involving a killing and the other having to do with a human enigma. The crime’s solution is fine and dandy, but it’s Poirot himself who most fascinates.
This isn’t your grandmother’s Agatha Christie, in other words. It belongs to Branagh, heart and soul.
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