Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Gal Gadot, Russell Brand, Armie Hammer, Dawn French
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Runtime: 127 mins. Reviewed in Feb 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This thriller murder mystery movie is a filmed sequel to Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express. It shows Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot unravelling brutal murders on a steamboat ride up Egypt’s, River Nile. Typical of Agatha Christie, the film has many unpredictable outcomes, and lots of calculated diversions.
This American-British thriller is directed from a screenplay by Michael Green, and is based on the novel of the same name written in 1937 by Agatha Christie. It is a follow-up film to Murder on the Orient Express (2017), which not only was directed by Branagh, but saw him in the lead role as Hercule Poirot.
The film has a particularly large ensemble cast, that includes Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)), and Ridley Scott is the producer. The movie is reported as having been delayed due to major misconduct allegations against one of the cast – Hammer, who plays Simon Doyle.
This is the second of two movie versions of Agatha Christie’s novel. This film does not have quite the same illustrious cast as the 1978 version, which starred Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury and Maggie Smith.
In this film, Hercule Poirot (Branagh) takes a steamboat ride up the Nile on SS Karnak, a boat clearly designed for the very rich. On board, a glamorous couple’s idyllic honeymoon is tragically cut short by the brutal murder of one of them, and Poirot makes it clear that the killer must be one of the passengers on board. His task is to identify the killer before he, or she, strikes again. The film’s plotline twists and turns until it finally startles.
The luxury paddle steamer is filled with people, who decadently parade their wealth, and the film features elaborate set designs that highlight 1930s opulent decor. The result is a sumptuously mounted murder mystery that brings Agatha Christie’s novel to the screen in vivid detail, and colour, and uses impressive vista and aerial photography. It quickly becomes obvious that several of the passengers have a plausible reason to think ill of the victim, be it ambition or envy, memories of past rejection, thwarted love, frustrated payback, robbery, or simple greed.
Branagh directs the movie with theatrical flair. His actions are central to everything that happens, and his performance is self-conscious, egotistical, obsessive, and caricatured – which reflect personality features Poirot would be entirely happy to own.
It is important in an Agatha Christie novel, or film, not to guess the killer too early. This is a movie that clearly respects that rule, and important secrets aren’t revealed until the finish. When they are revealed by Poirot, they genuinely shock. Along the way, the integral thread of a coherent thriller is absorbed into a heady mixture of conflicting alternatives and possibilities. Tension almost seems to be randomly let loose, no matter what. This is a movie where viewers are invited to guess at almost every possible turn, but the film delivers a splendid, ‘who done it?’, that hangs onto uncertainty until the finish, when Poirot cleverly reveals all.
Drama and mystery hold sway until the end, and in production terms – sets, costuming, and scenery – the movie leaves little to be desired. Hitchcock would have directed this movie differently by keeping a much tighter rein on ‘suspicion’ en route, but the film is nevertheless an engaging one.
It is colourful, well produced, engenders multiple possibilities, and is in no way predictable – features that would have been much to the liking of the writer of the novel on which the film is based.
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