Death on the Nile review: Kenneth Branagh makes a good old-fashioned mess

Iconography is a key element of every franchise. Batman’s pointy ears are on the cowl of his bat-signal, and the car is sleek. Jurassic Park features the intelligent velociraptors and the mole in amber. Hercule Poirot? He’s got a fancy mustache, one that has appeared in numerous films, television series, and stage plays. Agatha Christie’s beloved detective isn’t a synonym for mysteries and solving them in the same way Sherlock Holmes is, but his brand? It’s strong.

This brand also seemed to be on the verge of making a comeback. Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 film Murder at the Orient Express, perhaps the best-known of Christie’s novels to feature the mustachioed detective, was a sleeper hit, with a $352 million box-office gross on a $55 million budget. Branagh himself stars as Poirot, and surrounds himself with a star-studded cast, including Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Josh Gad, Judi Dench, and others — all packaged in a marketing campaign smothered in Imagine Dragons.

You might like Batman Begins, Murder at the Orient Express ended with a sequel tease, in this case promising “a murder on the bloody nile,” signaling that Branagh would adapt Christie’s The Nile: Death at the Crossroads next. COVID-19 then shattered that plan. The release was originally scheduled to be released during the holiday season of 2019, but it was delayed significantly by the pandemic. The Nile: Death at the Crossroads has arrived two years later than planned, and it’s a stranger film for it. While the film sat complete and its studio hoped for a profitable wide release, its cast accrued a number of PR disasters ranging in severity, including Letitia Wright’s alleged anti-vax messaging, Gal Gadot’s controversial stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and most notably, troubling and bizarre allegations of abuse and sexual coercion levied against Armie Hammer, leading to his Hollywood exile.

Photo: Rob Youngson/20th Century Studios

Unfortunately not The Nile: Death at the Crossroads, Hammer’s role as the striver Simon Doyle, who marries above his station, is central to the plot, and speculation over the film’s pandemic release strategy soon gave way to speculation over its Armie Hammer strategy. Two years later, the studio answer to Hammer seems to be identical to many corporations’ response to the pandemic: Disney and 20th Century Studios are quietly forging ahead with the film, without acknowledging the problems.

This is a common problem. The Nile: Death at the Crossroads an awkward film, one that’s hard to parse in trailers that only show Hammer in passing, and one that arrives at an awkward time, as the ongoing pandemic curdles into a restless public uncertainty over how to behave in a new normal that lacks clarity. The compromise was made to allow a movie that wouldn’t normally be released during a holiday rush, but might still succeed without one if there is enough competition. This is the perfect setting for a movie about the small bourgeoisie who are able to cozy up to their wealth and not risk it.

The Nile: Death at the CrossroadsThe mystery revolves around one of most common provocations to murder: the wedding. (Don’t think so? You can plan one. Simon Roy, a man of few resources, has just married wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot), a shocking development after Roy’s previous whirlwind engagement to Linnet’s best friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey). To celebrate their nuptials, the newlyweds honeymoon with friends and family on the S.S. Karnak, a pleasure barge that will take them through eastern Africa for several days of indulgent partying and “enough champagne to fill the Nile.”

Photograph by 20th Century Studios

Poirot goes on vacation in Egypt with his friend Bouc, Tom Bateman reprising the role of Poirot. Murder at the Orient ExpressTo join the celebrations, Linnet is murdered. With a boat full of suspects and the confined space getting smaller all the time as the killer grows desperate, Poirot must find the culprit before they strike again — and like in every good mystery, just about everyone is acting suspicious and has a motive.

Branagh plays Poirot with a muted performance. He’s a detective who’s proud of his ability to solve crimes, yet still outraged by them. Branagh makes it clear that he feels a profound sorrow for his moustache. That baseline is appreciated in a cast full of uneven performances — their quality usually commensurate with how much time the film spends with a character. Hammer is the exception. Hammer, however, is an exception. Simon Doyle has to be both charming and terrifying. Hammer has demonstrated a talent in this regard in films such as We’re sorry. Rebecca. But the film does not arrive in a vacuum — knowledge of the actor’s ongoing scandals make it hard to read AnyHe is a generous man. It almost seems like a spoiler.

Largely faithful to Christie’s novel, at least in the broad strokes, Branagh’s adaptation from a script by Michael Green makes several tweaks that bring it into continuity with the previous film (the original novels weren’t in sequence) and underline the book’s class consciousness. In this version, for example, Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo) is a blues singer instead of a romance novelist, and her niece/manager Rosalie (Letitia Wright) is in love with Bouc — a relationship Bouc’s mother Euphemia (Annette Benning) is suspicious of, due to the wealth Bouc stands to inherit — and while Euphemia is too well-mannered to say it out loud, because of Rosalie’s race.

Photograph by 20th Century Studios

While the film is slow-moving and at times turgid, its take on love as class warfare gives it a compelling mean streak that’s fun to think about, even when it doesn’t unfold onscreen in the most compelling manner. Beautifully presented and lavishly designed, Branagh’s vision is hamstrung by a large cast that leaves too many characters underdeveloped, and a slow pace that may make viewers feel like they’re trapped on the Karnak with said cast, not in a good way.

There is a certain appeal to it. The Nile: Death at the Crossroads’s old-fashioned appeal, with its wide shots, its warm hues, and its utter confidence that its mystery is enough to keep the audience interested. It’s flashy because the characters are: This is a story about extraordinarily wealthy Europeans frolicking on the Nile while locals carry their bags and serve them lobster, where a marriage and a signature can take one man from relative obscurity to the upper echelons of society. The perfect spot to watch Hercule poirot.

Agatha Christie’s characterization of Poirot consistently depicts him as abhorring mess, to the point that he prizes symmetry to an obsessive degree. In Branagh’s hands, this is largely played for comedy; in one scene, he cannot begin to eat dessert until all his pastries are perfectly arranged on a plate. But there’s also tragedy here, a sadness to this man who solves crimes and seeks symmetry among the members of high society. Hercule poirot is not able to find symmetry in this world. As Linette says before her death, nobody is your friend when you have money — and it’s no coincidence that after her death, everyone around her is a suspect.

The Nile: Death at the CrossroadsThis film is playing now in cinemas