A Slow Death

I recently watched Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh's follow-up to the latest adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (and also based on an Agatha Christie novel). I'll spoil a mystery right now (not The Mystery) and tell you: I did not like it. I want to get that out in the open first so that I can briefly explore the question: why did I think I was going to like it?

In sitting down to write this brief review, I looked back at my review of the previous film. My rough thesis now was going to be "that movie was pretty good, so how did this one go so wrong?" I was shocked to find that I only gave Murder on the Orient Express a C. It was not, in my original judgment, "pretty good." How had I scrambled that up in only a few years? I decided that what was generally an average film grew in esteem as I forgot about it. And likely, my thoughts on the newest adaptation became jumbled with other, superior adaptations I have seen.

But the ending of Murder on the Orient Express is relatively famous. I certainly knew it before I ever watched my first adaptation of the book. So... what about an Agatha Christie story I didn't know the end of? That was the appeal of Death on the Nile, surely.

Unfortunately -- in this version, at least -- Death on the Nile is pretty rough. Famed detective Hercule Poirot is on a ship sailing down the Nile, when strikes a murder most foul that he must crack. Except... that summary suggests a far better pacing than the movie actually has. Death on the Nile is 127 minutes long, and is literally more than half over before the murder takes place. The first hour is a languid introduction to a large cast of characters -- who, of course, are all reprehensible since they're all meant to eventually be suspects. Indeed, for most of the run time of Death on the Nile, the "mystery" almost seems to be "who is going to be killed?" (And is it ever going to actually happen?) That approach to a murder mystery sounds unique, but isn't very satisfying here.

As slow as the pace is for the bulk of the movie, it's just as awkwardly compressed in the final act. Events suddenly come at you with a breakneck pace, apparently part of a strategy to keep you disoriented in hopes that you won't think hard enough to solve the case before Poirot? If so, it did not work for me, at least. The mystery doesn't really have as many credible motives as it does suspects, which narrows the field considerably.

As with Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh has assembled an excellent cast. Death on the Nile features Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer (right as we all found out more than we wanted to know about him), Rose Leslie, and Letitia Wright. But for all the stars, no one is really called upon to give a very demanding performance. Everyone is here clearly because they "thought it would be fun"; no one seems to be here because they found their role interesting. The closest we get to a scene stealer is Emma Mackey, who I know -- but did not immediately recognize here -- from the superb TV series Sex Education. She's perhaps the one person who gets to "have fun" and "do something interesting" at the same time, and she's pretty good at it.

But that said, watching Sex Education (which I guess I need to review here on the blog some time!) would be a far better use of your time than watching Death on the Nile. I give the movie a D+. I hear Branagh has a third Poirot movie in early development. Perhaps by the time this one arrives, I'll remember that I probably don't actually want to see it.