Death on the Nile (Web Exclusive)
Reviewed by Odie Henderson

Produced by Kenneth Branagh, Judy Hofflund, Ridley Scott, and Kevin J. Walsh; directed by Kenneth Branagh; screenplay by Michael Green, based on the novel by Agatha Christie; cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos; edited by Úna Ní Dhonghaíle; production design by Jim Clay; costume design by Paco Delgado; music by Patrick Doyle; starring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Dawn French, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Jennifer Saunders, and Letitia Wright. Blu-ray or DVD, B&W and color, 127 min., 2022. A 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment release.

Published in 1937, Death on the Nile was the sixteenth Agatha Christie novel to feature Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot. The story’s primary setting—the SS Karnak, a large river steamboat—seems like a cruel punishment dished out by an author who cursed her most enduring character with seasickness. Perhaps it was a small modicum of revenge; by 1930, Christie had tired of Poirot, deeming him “insufferable,” yet also acknowledging that she could not kill him off as her readers loved his mysteries. She would later call Poirot "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, and ego-centric,” characteristics that would most certainly make him catnip for a certain kind of actor. 

Enter Kenneth Branagh, director and star of this new adaptation of Death on the Nile. Like Sir Laurence Olivier, for whom he has now become heir apparent, Branagh enjoys larger-than-life performances in front of and behind the camera. When he is acting, whether in service to his own direction or to other helmers, Branagh has no fear of going big, seizing the moment, and pinning it down on the screen like a wrestler. For this, he has a reputation in some critics’ circles as being egotistical and over the top. But, as Polonius once said, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Every move, no matter how bombastic or swelled with emotion, feels carefully planned and calculated. This mixture of ego and precision makes the fussy, vain, and compulsive Hercule Poirot a perfect role for him. As Calum Marsh wrote in his New York Times survey of Poirot performances, “it’s abundantly clear that Branagh adores this character, and he has endeavored, in his own way, to make Poirot his own.” 

As director, Branagh’s camera likes to make its presence felt, sweeping through vistas and entering the frame from odd directions. His Shakespearean adaptations such as Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), and Hamlet (1996) are chock-full of overt often feral sexuality and tantalizing violence, modernizing them without changing the Bard’s language. His take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) is equally randy and gruesome, as is his masterpiece Dead Again (1991), a film whose dark meditation on the terrifying things people do for love is revisited and expanded upon in Death on the Nile. The sheer, decadent, and operatic theatricality of the murder mystery is tailor-made for Branagh and he does not disappoint. This is one of the more satisfying of the more than thirty cinematic Agatha Christie adaptations.

After a shaky though effective debut as Poirot in 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, Branagh owns the role here. Part of this is due to screenwriter Michael Green (who also adapted Murder), who has added new elements to the story. First, he brings back Tom Bateman, with whom Branagh shared a memorable chemistry in the prior film. Bateman’s Bouc replaces another character from the novel while anchoring a subplot that folds neatly back into Christie’s original puzzle. Second, Green creates a small bit of backstory for Poirot, which Branagh leverages both as a new facet to play and as a reinforcement of the film’s themes.

Christie purposely left Poirot’s history vague, but she did give him his defining and most recognizable feature: the greatest mustache in literature. Previous Poirot enactors such as Albert Finney, who received an Oscar nomination for his interpretation, and David Suchet, who played the role seventy times on the British television network ITV, leaned into the flamboyance of their facial hair with varying degrees of success. Peter Ustinov, who starred in the somnambulant and dull 1978 version of Death on the Nile (one of his six appearances as Poirot), sported a gray version that curled up sharply at both ends. Not to be outdone, Branagh’s Poirot sports a mustache so complex that it took nine attempts to perfect it. He also sports a soul patch under his lower lip that vaguely resembles an accent mark made by a cake designer’s piping bag.

This facial hair is so impressive that Green engages his creative license to craft an origin story for it. The film opens with a black-and-white prologue set in 1917 on the Yser Bridge during World War I. The camera snakes through the army trenches, in seeming homage to Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957), before settling on an impressively mustachioed man in uniform. It is not Poirot, however. It is his captain, a man for whom he has genuine affection and respect. The feeling is mutual; when Poirot suggests changing a battle plan based on his deductions, his captain goes along with little hesitation. “I am not wrong,” Poirot says, and he is not. But a tragic tripwire accident kills the captain and graphically scars Poirot’s face. The mustache he thereafter grows to hide the damage also serves as a tribute to a fallen man. 

Green’s addition (made with the approval of the Christie estate) also serves as a means of explaining why Poirot is a bachelor. Post-accident, when his lover Katherine visits him in the military hospital, Poirot uses his injury to drive her away. “Do you have any idea how love works?” she asks him, a question that could also be posed to any of the suspects involved in the murder that will occupy the detective’s time on the Karnak. Repeatedly, Death on the Nile provides a sinister answer, practically justifying Poirot’s strenuous aversion to all things romantic. The source material is one of Christie’s darker works, revealing that love and lust are often the catalysts for selfish violence. Despite all the fun the viewer has trying to piece together this whodunit, the film never lets one forget Noah Cross’s adage in Chinatown: “Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.” 

For as long as they’ve been performed, the allure of these Christie mysteries has been witnessing the large cast of actors brought together to hash out her plots. The 1978 version of Death on the Nile hews closer to the Irwin Allen school of casting made popular by his successful 1970s disaster movies—get a bunch of older actors from the early days of Hollywood and pit them against one another and the screenplay. Branagh’s method mixes seasoned veterans such as Annette Bening, Sophie Okonedo. and Jennifer Saunders with more recent stars like Armie Hammer, Russell Brand, Emma Mackey, Letitia Wright, and Gal Gadot. This film’s lovers and suspects are younger than the novel’s, or Ustinov’s version, allowing Branagh a far more salacious depiction of the murderous love triangle. A scene of Hammer dirty dancing with both Mackey and Gadot is downright smutty in its choreography, oozing with a carnality that will prove fatal.

Gadot’s Linnet Ridgeway is the murder victim, shot in the head at close range while she was sleeping in her room on the Karnak. This occurs shortly after her wedding to Hammer’s Simon Doyle. Doyle had previously been involved with Mackey’s Jacqueline de Bellefort, who keeps showing up wherever he and Linnet are. Her jealousy makes her the prime suspect but, as expected, everyone on that ship had a reason to off Linnet. Poirot interrogates them all while leading up to the scene every fan of this genre awaits: the revelation of the murderer and the explanation of how the case was solved. True to his theatrical grandiosity, Branagh opens this sequence by having Poirot use the murder weapon to shoot the doors of the Karnak stateroom closed.

Poirot’s origin story haunts Death on the Nile, not just in the scenes where Okonedo’s blues singer flirts relentlessly, whereas the sleuth is smitten against his better judgment. It’s there whenever love causes anyone pain and loss, which is often. Even Poirot can’t resist betraying his best friend by secretly investigating Bouc’s love interest. As Bouc’s mother, Bening delivers a scathing monologue about how wrong 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 is about love. Unlike the Bible, the film argues that love is evil, troublesome, and unworthy of anyone’s effort, an idea made explicit by the self-destructive resolution to the crime. Even so, the film’s final shot is a bittersweet coda rife with the potential to prove that theory wrong. 

This Blu-ray edition is excellent, popping with the vibrant colors and dark shadows of Haris Zambarloukos’s cinematography, though it does draw more attention to some of Branagh’s questionable visual touches, such as the murderous CGI animals that blatantly symbolize the film’s lurking evil. Although some location footage shot in Egypt and Morocco was later used impressively for green-screen purposes, most of the film was shot at Longcross Studios in the U.K., where the massive sets, including the Abu Simbel temples and the Karnak (which took a year to build), were created. The visual effects are impressive enough to convince viewers that the actors are really on the Nile. Patrick Doyle’s ominous score and the soundtrack are well rendered. The disc’s extra features provide brief yet interesting information on a variety of subjects. One feature shows how production designer Jim Clay recreated Agatha Christie’s decadent universe. Comments from Christie’s grandson and great-grandson give some insight into the novelist’s creative process and her feelings about her most famous character. Branagh and Green also discuss portraying Poirot. Deleted scenes are mostly uninteresting, save for a few moments that flesh out Okonedo’s sharp verbal interactions during her interrogation by Poirot. The detective appreciates her honesty, and one wishes the scene where she makes him blush had remained in the final cut. 

Odie Henderson, who is based in the NYC area, is a film critic for RogerEbert.com.

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Cineaste, Vol. XLVII, No. 4