Death on the Nile will hit theaters on Feb. 11.
Actor-director Kenneth Branagh loves Hercule Poirot — perhaps more than most people, including his audience — and it shows in his second outing with the character. A loose sequel to Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile remains somewhat faithful to Agatha Christie’s novel in its overall telling, but Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green play fast and loose with its structure, pushing the “murder” part of the “murder mystery” further back into the runtime, in order to set up a much more intimate story. It doesn’t always work. In fact, its first hour often flounders in shallow water, but once Branagh’s approach to the character finally clicks, the film’s many weaknesses begin to fade into the background, making room for a surprisingly intense and personal second half. It’s an adaptation that requires mountains of patience, but that patience does pay off.
Before introducing its all-star cast, Death on the Nile invents a brand-new backstory for the Belgian detective, one that goes against most of what Christie had previously established. This is now Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot, with a tragic and violent new origin told through the director’s signature, swaying long takes, and some less-than-stellar digital de-aging (the first of many clashes between Branagh’s use of crisp 70mm film and subpar digital effects). Our patience is tested up front, in a World War I sequence that doesn’t appear to make much emotional sense as anything but a horribly melodramatic (and unnecessary) origin for — of all things — Poirot’s moustache, but even this strangely executed flashback ends up just about fitting into Branagh’s grand plan for the character.
That plan begins to emerge slowly and surely when Poirot vacations in Egypt in 1937, where he runs into Bouc (Tom Bateman), a character from the previous film, who had no involvement in the original novel. While most viewers are unlikely to remember any prior interactions between them — if they remember Bouc at all — there’s a genuine love and familiarity between Poirot and his young friend, as they catch up en route to a fancy wedding, where the story and bloodshed are set to unfold.
Bouc introduces the film’s many players to Poirot, and to us, laying the groundwork for a tale of jealousy, wealth, and intricate conspiracy, but only the first of those elements arrives with any sort of precision. The bride and groom, Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer), are being stalked by Simon’s ex-lover Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey). It’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong, and Mackey simmers with a jealousy waiting to explode into something uncontainable, making her especially alluring to watch. Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, in turn, light Mackey’s arrival into each scene with a dazzling, old-world Hollywood glamor, and they craft her intimate confessions of scorned madness with creeping shadows that wrap their way around her face. If there’s one character Branagh loves nearly as much as Poirot, it’s Jacqueline, but she’s also the only element of the film that fully works at first.
In contrast, Gadot and Hammer have a negative amount of physical and emotional chemistry, despite their romance being a central fixture. Gadot is especially unconvincing as an heiress molded on much more glamorous and intriguing stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age (a filmmaking era from which Branagh frequently draws). Nearly as unconvincing is all the talk of their enormous wealth, which rarely seems to manifest on screen. For a story of supposedly magnificent opulence, its sets and costumes are exceptionally plain to look at, even once everyone sets sail aboard the expensive S.S. Karnak.
Thankfully, Linnet and Simon are far from the only major characters, despite their importance to the plot. There’s Bouc’s overbearing mother, Euphemia (Annette Bening), a painter who has her own ideas for the lovelorn Bouc’s future. There’s the dynamic blues singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo), who briefly becomes the object of Poirot’s affection, and there’s her ward and business manager, Rosalie (Letitia Wright), who, unfortunately, exhibits the same problems as Linnet and Simon; she’s often touted, by other characters, for her intellect, humor, and emotional radiance, but Wright has an exceptional non-presence in the role (made all the more awkward by the British actress’ discomfort with an American accent). There’s Linnet’s dedicated French maid Louise (Rose Leslie), and there’s her godmother, Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders), whose boastfully pro-working class stance clashes hilariously with her very presence aboard the yacht, and with the fact that she’s waited on hand-and-foot by her nurse, Mrs. Bowers (Dawn French) — the two of them make for a delightful pair.
However, the most immediately impactful supporting performances among the wedding guests come courtesy of Russell Brand, as Linnet’s former fiancé, Linus Windlesham — an aristocratic doctor, whose silent acceptance of Linnet’s new love makes him the most sympathetic suspect — and Ali Fazal as Andrew Katchadourian, Linnet’s shifty-eyed cousin and estate agent, who slithers through every scene, as if every line and interaction of his contains ulterior motives. In addition to the two of them, Bateman layers Bouc with the charm and self-affliction of a young Marlon Brando, so even when most of the film’s Hollywood throwbacks fail to make an impact, he remains a star in waiting, ready to shine.
These secondary characters all bear passing resemblances to those in Christie’s novel, but like Poirot, their specifics and backstories have been shuffled around. These changes not only give each of them more connections to one another (and thus, more potential motives when they’re all eventually made suspects), but they also help align each one of them with Branagh’s through line for Poirot, which slowly reveals itself to be about clashing cynicism and optimism in the face of love. In the movie, love is a powerful force that brings people together and pushes them violently apart, and despite Poirot’s best efforts — owing to a long lost love in his own past, of which he’s frequently reminded — the methodical detective is drawn deeper not only into a mystery of murder, but of passion gone awry, which brings to the surface feelings he had long and comfortably buried.
Before Death on the Nile gets to this emotional place, however, it drags its feet through an occasionally off-kilter aesthetic experience. Each time the story stops at some famous location (for instance, the Great Pyramids, or the tomb of Rameses II), these exteriors are brought half to life through an awkward digital un-reality that is distracting at best, and at worst a direct clash with its attempts to feel grand and exotic. There are moments when fleeting second-unit shots of riverbanks and passing extras feel more real, more tangible, and simply more pleasant to look at than anything that’s meant to be part of the story. Little in the film has the old-world charm Branagh brought to Murder on the Orient Express with his use of rear projections. Coupled with the strained performances from the likes of Gadot, it all feels uncanny and fake, when the reality of the extravagance is meant to be a major theme, for a story in which wealth is both a shield and a point of vulnerability.
However, once the story has taken plunge after plunge into bloody territory, Branagh’s visual approach sidesteps most of these problems. The digital sheen of daytime landscape shots is replaced by cramped interiors, in which interrogations and confessions unfold in rightfully uncomfortable spaces awash in mysterious darkness. When even more mysteries begin to pile up, nearly every character ends up sharing the screen at once, resulting in a remarkable juggling act of blocking and framing that makes the sheer weight of possibility overwhelming to Poirot, as he chases (sometimes literally) a murderer whose schemes may finally best him.
The performances are allowed a focused intensity in the film’s back half, including and especially Branagh’s, as Poirot struggles to maintain the fast-talking, professional charm that turns out to have been an emotional shield all along. Branagh’s struggle, as that armor begins to crack, leads to some of the most piercing individual close-ups in his recent career (whether as an actor or as a filmmaker), and they carry a surprising emotional heft. Even if the central pieces of its mystery aren’t all that mysterious, everyone who ends up caught in its crosshairs — including and especially the man trying to unravel it all — is afforded enough emotionally incisive moments that add up to a worthwhile whole.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/nHB7bCR
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