“The crime is murder. The murderer is one of you. I have investigated many crimes, but this has altered the shape of my soul. I am detective Hercule Poirot, and I will deliver your killer.” Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh)
In the newest Agatha Christie/Hercule Poirot mystery, Death on the Nile, Poirot is about as serious as mystery fiction would allow, and certainly the obsessive Poirot would allow. Because one of the murder victims means much to him, and because he is smitten by jazz singer Salome (Sophie Okonedo), Poirot is a full-bodied detective sharing some of our humanity and bringing a sympathy without witty accusations.
The location in an elegant paddle boat on the Nile and remarkable gigantic effigies of Ramses and the Sphinx lends a historicity to the proceedings while the icons tie vacationers to our sometimes-wicked natures. The new Queen of the Nile, Linette (Gal Godot), is grandly wealthy, gorgeous, and like the rest of us, vulnerable. Her new husband, Simon (Armie Hammer), is attentive but does not match her wealth, yet matches her gorgeous looks.
The rest of the cast is appropriately good looking and fit for suspicion, each with his/her reason to off the new bride. They may be the least intricate and magical of the suspects in this sub-genre, if only because Christie, director Branagh, and writer Michel Green are careful not to give much away while they develop characters real and weak, rightfully suspect as we all might be in similar circumstances.
The operative motif is love—mainly what we do for it, sometimes murder. This notion of potential mayhem in the wake of passion is well-chosen, for without its heat the mystery is just a lazy day down the river. It’s not that but rather is a treatise on the conjunction of love and sin, real or metaphorical. What we do for love, how we live without it, even Poirot, is the subject of Death on the Nile, gently woven into a seemingly light murder mystery. It is after all about “death.”
“The romance of the desert has the power to seduce. I ask you: have you ever loved so much, been so possessed by jealousy, that you might kill?”
Poirot
Death on the Nile
Director: Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Screenplay: Michael Green (Logan) based on Agatha Christie Novel
Cast: Tom Bateman (Bouc), Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger)
Run Time: 2h 7m
Rating: PG-13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
