[FILM]
DEATH ON THE NILE
Kenneth Branagh returns as the moustachioed super-sleuth.
★★★
OUT NOW CERT TBC / 127 MINS
DIRECTOR Kenneth Branagh
CAST Kenneth Branagh, Gal Gadot, Tom Bateman, Emma Mackey, Armie Hammer, Letitia Wright, Sophie Okonedo
PLOT Egypt, 1937. Famed detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is invited to join a wedding party on a Nile boat trip — gatecrashed by the groom’s (Hammer) old flame (Mackey). When a murderer strikes, it is down to Poirot, bien sûr, to solve the mystery.
HOLLYWOOD IS SO obsessed with origin stories that even stories that weren’t originally origin stories get turned into origin stories. At least, that is the case with Death On The Nile, director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green’s upscaled sequel to their polished-buthollow 2017 Agatha Christie adaptation Murder On The Orient Express. Before we even get to the film’s pre-Egyptian, London-based opening, there is a black-and-white prologue set in trenches of World War I Belgium, where we meet a young Poirot