It was startling when Kenneth Branagh helmed Thor, a Marvel film, in 2011. I don’t necessarily dislike the actor/director, but I have always found him to be smug and pretentious. His association with Shakespeare doesn’t help dissuade that opinion. And yet it now seems he always wanted to do “big” productions, as evidenced by his unfortunate turns as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in recent films, including 2022’s Death on the Nile. This curious spectacle combines middlebrow tastes in mystery fare with the bombast of modern superhero pictures.
I’ll start with the CGI. I am not such a luddite that I completely dismiss this technology in all forms; however, I will say it has changed the way movies are made, and not in a good way. Just because one can now do 360-degree tracking shots around something doesn’t mean one should. It now seems to be mandatory every film have one of those, or a similar shot that was technologically impossible until recently. It is pointlessly showy camerawork, especially since we have seen this done so many times that it is no longer impressive. Even worse, it is bad storytelling.
I invite anybody who sees this version to watch the 1978 version starring Peter Ustinov and take note of all the differences. That earlier take on the story was really filmed at the locations in Egypt that are only simulated here. Having a real pyramid just happen to appear in the background is vastly more impressive than having a virtual camera fly all around an obviously fake one.
Then there’s the pointless alternations and embellishments in this version. The first scene pointlessly has a digitally de-aged Branagh as a young Poirot in the trenches during WWI. This scene only serves two purposes: 1) unnecessary backstory for his lack of romantic interests and 2) a reason for the character’s famous mustache, which is explained here as covering a wound that takes up a whole side of his face. The latter is especially ridiculous, as his mustache isn’t that big.
To the first point, the focus on Poirot’s lack of a love life is provided only as setup for a potential romantic connection with one of the passengers. This is a huge mistake on so many levels, and I won’t bother to unpack that here. I’ll just leave it at this: way to demystify a character whose ongoing appeal is almost entirely because he is such a cypher.
Sophie Okonedo plays his love interest here, which sets up another problem. She is on the boat with Letitia Wright, and both actresses have been very good in other films and shows. Really, they are both serviceable here, except their characters are very thinly sketched. Each will basically be little more than love interests for white men. I question how progressive it is to add black characters to this work, if they are only going to be used for this. That, and the film is quite historically revisionist in that there is no discussion about their race. Like the disclaimer on the Looney Tunes discs says, it is a disservice to pretend these prejudices never existed.
While we’re on the subject of newly-minted characters, I was irritated by how characters were eliminated from the novel and original movie and then others were created from whole cloth. Curiously, I think the sum total of major roles ends up about the same as before, so I don’t understand the point of that effort. Sorely missed is the role David Niven played in the original, as Poirot’s friend and sounding board.
Death on the Nile is complete garbage, but it is garbage people can easily watch, and by watching, feel they are smarter and more sophisticated than others. But I question how much of a right a person has to feel smug about reductionist, revisionist, populist tripe presented in all the worst trappings of the modern filmmaking era.
Something is wrong when the main thing on my mind at the end of its long runtime was a minor thing that happened nearly two hours earlier. When Okonedo is playing an amplified acoustic guitar in a club, and she crosses the busy dancefloor in a long, unbroken shot, where did her guitar cable disappear to? I wish we had seen it all over that floor, with an endless succession of dancers tripping over it and face-planting.
Dir: Kenneth Branagh
Starring Kenneth Branagh and a whole bunch of famous actors, though the cast is nowhere near as impressive as the first filmed version
Watched on a blu-ray I immediately turned around and gave to somebody else