BEFORE: I (sort of) met Kenneth Branagh back in February, during awards season things kind of heated up at the theater where I work part-time, a lot of big actors and directors come to speak to the various guild members at the screenings, they do Q&A's to try to influence their voting, I guess. Not for "Death on the Nile", no way, this was at a screening of "Belfast", which I'm trying to save for St. Patrick's Day next year, maybe. But I got to cue him to go on stage after the screening was over, and the tech team gave me a few seconds notice that the credits were about to end and the lights would be coming on. I got a picture of him in the lobby, not a selfie, just a candid shot. I love sending my wife blurry candid photos of celebrities, especially ones where you can't tell for sure who it is, so, really, it could be a photo of anybody, but I know it's a photo of Kenneth Branagh.
Two actresses carry over from "Sing 2", Jennifer Saunders and Letitia Wright. Sorry for dropping in a murder mystery in a week that's mostly kids movies, but the logic of dropping this one in here will be apparent tomorrow, this one also connects to another animated movie for kids.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Murder on the Orient Express" (Movie #2,901)
THE PLOT: While on vacation on the Nile, Hercule Poirot must investigate the murder of a young heiress.
AFTER: What's funny is that I watched the 1978 version of "Death on the Nile", with Peter Ustinov playing Poirot, WAY back in Year ONE of this project, in June of 2009 - and of course I don't remember the identity of the murderer, because that was like over 4,000 movies ago. (4,072, but who's counting?). I mean, I remember who the killer was in "Murder on the Orient Express", but largely because I'd seen the MAD magazine version back when I was a kid, and of course, that Agatha Christie story has a very memorable and distinct ending. This one, eh, maybe not so much.
They pull that "I've gathered all the suspects together in this room...." jazz at the end, but it's really not necessary. I kind of feel like I could have guessed the killer and the twist here, it's almost painfully obvious. What starts as a love triangle ends in a murder, after Simon Doyle, the fiancé of Jackie de Belfort leaves her for the more attractive and richer heiress, Linnet Ridgeway. After the couple leaves on a honeymoon cruise down the Nile, the scorned Jackie keeps turning up somehow at every stop. Also on the ship is Linnet's maid, Louise, her godmother, Marie Van Schuyler, her godmother's nurse/companion, Mrs. Bowers, her financial manager and cousin, Andrew Katchadourian, and her former fiancé, Dr. Windlesham. Also, for some reason, blues singer Salome Otterbourne is on the cruise, I guess because she was performing at a club in London, the night that Simon and Linnet met, and this means that Salome's niece and manager, Rosalie, is also aboard. Rosalie is in love with Bouc, who was a character in the previous movie, "Murder on the Orient Express", and Bouc's mother, an artist named Euphemia. Bouc is also friends with Hercule Poirot, which kind of explains why he's on the ship.
(When we saw Hercule Poirot at the end of the last movie, he was being summoned to go on the river cruise down (up?) the Nile River, but that all seemed a little weird, because the murder in question hadn't happened yet, so why was he needed BEFORE it took place? Ah, he was being hired to be on that ship for a totally different reason, which we find out later. Getting to solve a murder while there is really just the icing on the cake for him.)
But before all this goes down, there's a flashback to World War I, where Poirot, as a young soldier, puts his powers of observation to good use. He notices that the birds are flying a certain way, which means the wind is from the east, which makes it a good time for Belgian forces to attack the German army and take back the bridge, since the fog will cover their crossing of the No Man's Land between the trenches. He's right, of course, but the traps on the bridge still take the life of his commanding officer, and he feels responsible. Also, this sequence serves as the origin story for Poirot's moustache, and I really wish I were joking about this.
Anyway, back to the murder. Everybody who's on the boat after the heiress gets killed had some kind of grudge against her, or would somehow profit from her death - so it started to look like a repeat of the group from "Murder on the Orient Express", who all had a reason to kill Johnny Depp's career - I mean, the businessman played by Johnny Depp. But this mystery then goes in a different direction as Poirot starts eliminating the suspects, and as Sherlock said, once you have eliminated what is impossible, what remains, however improbable, is the solution. Or it also works if what remains is pretty darn likely in the first place.
They obviously modernized the story here and there, like authors couldn't write about interracial couples back then, or secret lesbian long-term relationships, but all that is more common now, so why not work it in? I know, the Agatha Christie purists out there are probably up in arms. Times change and attitudes change, and period pieces should probably change with the times, except for those weird movies that insist on showing multiracial aristocrats during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. But then it seems like a lot of streamlining was also done here, the film combined a couple of characters and dropped a couple others just to make things less confusing for the average audience of dumb Americans.
But it's almost a comical coincidence to have Poirot in the same London nightclub where the initial romance between Simon and Linnet started, and for him to pay attention to these people that he didn't yet know, and have such insight into their history, along with all the other people from that club who ended up on that boat. But then, you have to remember, this is set back in 1937, and there were a lot less people on Earth back then, so naturally you would expect there to be more coincidences like this.
Also starring Kenneth Branagh (last seen in "Tenet"), Tom Bateman (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Annette Bening (last seen in "Hope Gap"), Russell Brand (last heard in "Trolls"), Ali Fazal (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Dawn French (last heard in "Coraline"), Gal Gadot (last seen in "Red Notice"), Armie Hammer (last seen in "Call Me by Your Name"), Rose Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Susannah Fielding, Michael Rouse (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Orlando Seale (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Charlie Anson (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Adam Garcia (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Crispin Letts (ditto), Rick Warden (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Noel White, Victor Alli, Rachel Feeney, Sarah Eve, Aron Julius, Francis Lovehall, Stacy Abalogun, Naveed Khan, Katie Smale, Kemi Awoderu, Nadine Leon Gobet
RATING: 6 out of 10 heiroglyphs
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