DEATH ON THE NILE — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B-

Sorry to be a killjoy here, but it really should be noted that the 2022 version of Death on the Nile, which is set mostly in Egypt, was only shot in a studio in England. The Egytpian Pyramids are simply rendered with CGI. I will admit that a lot of the exterior shots are pretty impressive CGI work, but it’s still often identifiably visual effects work—which robs the visuals of their genuine majesty. What’s the point of “seeing” one of the great wonders of the world if it’s not actually what you’re looking at? That feels a little like saying you’ve “been” somewhere just because you saw it online. What’s more, several wide exterior shots are seen from far above the Nile river, with the camera swooping in an arc down toward the setting, such as an opulent hotel. The end result is less majestic than it is just like watching a computer simulation.

Did I mention Death on the Nile is a whodunnit? The central mystery of the story should always be the focus, but Kenneth Branagh, who directed this movie as well as its similarly mediocre predecessor, Murder on the Orient Express (2017), spends an oddly excessive amount of time distracting the viewer with obvious visual effects in a movie that should not necessitate such things. This movie was actually shot in 2019, and apparently there was intent to shoot on location in Egypt, but that “proved too difficult.” How or why, I couldn’t say—except that 2019 was before Covid-19, so that obviously wasn’t the reason.

Maybe shooting on location in Egypt is more complicated and difficult now than it was in 1978, when John Guillermin made his earlier version, starring Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, Mia Farrow, George Kennedy, Mia Farrow, and more. Honestly, my recommendation is just to find that earlier version and watch it instead. It doesn’t appear to be available anywhere streaming or even VOD right now; I found it on DVD at my local library and look forward to seeing a version that is by all accounts better. The story may be basically the same, but greater authenticity in locations can make a huge difference. Plus there’s that cast.

Granted, this 2022 version has a pretty star studded cast itself: Kenneth Branagh once again as Detective Hercule Poirot, with an ensemble cast including Armie Hammer, Gal Godot, Annette Bening, Black Panther’s Letitia Wright, and largely unrecognizable turns by Jennifer Saunders (using an American accent) and Russel Brand (as the boat’s resident doctor). Most of these people, I usually enjoy watching, although I will say Death on the Nile does suffer from the common problem of a star-studded ensemble cast watering down the star power of any one individual.

More than anything, this is Branagh’s movie, as expected given he’s both the director and plays the most famous character from Agatha Christie novels. This film does include a prologue before the opening credits that borders on camp, offering a totally unnecessary backstory for what, I guess, we are supposed to think of as his iconic mustache. I’ve heard debate as to whether audiences are supposed to take this at face value or if it’s meant to be funny. This did not come across as tongue-in-cheek to me at all. Not only that, but the severe war injury the mustache is supposed to have covered up doesn’t even make sense. We don’t see any scars at all around his ridiculous mustache. but based on the injury we are shown onscreen, we really should see scars, mustache or not. The scars do make an appearance at the end of the film and they don’t even match the facial real estate covered by the injury shown at the beginning of the film. So I was like: what?

None of this sounds like I enjoyed the movie very much, does it? I actually did have a relatively good time. But how much fun you have watching a movie and how good it actually is are not always directly correlated. My biggest issue with this Death on the Nile is how good it could have been, but then it just doesn’t bother to be. And yet, I still liked it better than Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, albeit not by a wide margin. A chief complaint would be its 127-minute run time, which is wholly unnecessary, given the number of times Branagh cut away to totally unnecessary visual interludes. More than once he takes the camera either to the shores of the Nile or to the river floor, so we can see CGI-rendered wildlife feeding on prey. There’s a shot with a crocodile that cracked me up, but in most cases it just feels like filler, which is never needed in a movie that runs longe than two hours. Death on the Nile would have been noticeably improved were it, say, fifteen minutes shorter.

All of that aside, it’s still fun to see so many great actors just having a good time, chewing scenery. I did keep thinking about Ryan Johnson’s 2019 film Knives Out, a far superior film much better suited to 21sr-century audiences. Both movies are very much in the same genre, but Knives Out spends far less time taking itself seriously, and contains a lot more clever humor. Death on the Nile feels comparatively like a throwback to another time, in which case, why not just watch the movie that was already made in the seventies? In other words, Death on the Nile is fundamentally pointless and useless, with the sole exception of seeing current actors we love perform again what was already seen before. This movie does feature a few modernized twists, beyond a fairly noticeable racial diversification of the cast, but the overall plot still feels decidedly old-school. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—I was more entertained by this film than I expected, its obvious flaws notwithstanding—it just means there remain better offerings out there.