The old-fashioned whodunnit never goes out of fashion on TV – particularly on British TV.
The big-screen version – invariably based on the novels of Dame Agatha Christie – tend to be a bit more hit and miss.
They’re usually presented as all-star, Thirties extravaganzas. That was certainly the case with Kenneth Branagh’s cover version of the successful 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express.
Photo: Screenshot
Sir Ken’s effort was, frankly, a bit of a mess – and not just his horrible moustache. But it wasn’t as bad as the follow-up.
Death on the Nile seems to follow the formula – lots of stars, or at least name-actors - an exotic locale and Sir Kenneth hamming it up as mustachioed, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
But Branagh has decided to bring the story up to date.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. Christie’s novels were very much “of their time”, and times and attitudes change.
But one thing Christie excelled at was plot, which usually worked like well-oiled, intricate clockwork.
You certainly don’t need more plot – least of all a whole backstory of Poirot’s early days that has next to nothing to do with the Nile or the Death on it.
Did you know – or care – that he was a Belgian war hero? Or that there was a love of his life? And an actual reason for that ridiculous soup-strainer on his top lip?
All this pointless extra persiflage does is put off the story for 20 minutes, so we spend the rest of the movie sprinting to catch up.
Let’s meet the wedding party taking a luxury cruise on the Nile.
The happy couple are played by Wonder Woman Gal Gadot, whose career took a slight dive since those heady days three years ago, and Armie Hammer, whose career took a spectacular dive thanks to a scandal that erupted on social media.
This may very well be his last movie for the foreseeable!
Also aboard is Mr Bouc from the last Poirot movie, played by the charmless Tom Bateman, who I can only assume is a personal friend of Sir Ken. He’s mostly on exposition duty.
Doctor Windlesham is the strikingly miscast comedian Russell Brand, displaying a totally expected lack of talent as an actor.
Also along for the ride – the casting is random in the extreme – are former comedy team Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
Playing Bouc’s mother is – why not? – Annette Bening, while up on stage is Sophie Okonedo as a wildly unlikely guitar-slinging cabaret star, with Leticia Wright as her pianist, manager, sax-player, niece – it’s all a bit vague.
Now there are usually two possible victims in a Christie novel. They’re either someone universally hated – thus offering plenty of potential suspects – or someone no-one has a bad word to say about – in which case it’s revealed that they were all lying.
No sooner has the first victim been felled by an oriental poison, an antique Egyptian dagger or an unexpected shot in the dark than Poirot starts collecting clues, and the rest of us wait for someone else to get killed.
Since Agatha Christie used to cheat shamelessly in her novels – suppressing information when it suited her, and offering plots so intricate that only Poirot could unravel them – the best thing to do was just go along for the ride.
The prime failing of this film is Branagh beefing up Poirot’s character - giving him an implausible history and even a romantic interest – at the expense of the actual story. I have no idea who killed the last two people for instance.
And frankly, when Poirot’s moustache finally comes off, the last reason to watch Death on the Nile goes with it.
