Death on the Nile review – murder-mystery sequel lacks both spark and surprise

Kenneth Branagh’s 2017 foray into the world of Agatha Christie, with his silly-but-enjoyable take on Murder on the Orient Express, seemed at the forefront of the current mini-renaissance of glossy, star-powered whodunits. Fast-forward four and a bit years, and Branagh is back in Christie-land with Death on the Nile, but there’s been one key change to the landscape that, along with some very muddled filmmaking, sinks this lumbering ship of a movie, a ponderous and pompous effort that plays its hand far, far too early.

We reunite with Hercule Poirot (Branagh) in Egypt in 1937, asked by ultra-wealthy couple Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) and Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) to accompany them – and a cadre of other wealthy guests – on their honeymoon over their fears of persistent stalker Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey). Only six weeks beforehand, Jacqueline was due to marry Simon, but his encounter with Linnet left the pair head-over-heels, and so a whirlwind romance led to the Doyle-Ridgeway marriage.

The entire invited party – along with Jacqueline – embark upon a Nile cruiser and, before long, there’s a murder aboard that the unfortunate but ingenious Poirot must solve. Unlike Orient Express, I wasn’t familiar with Nile’s twists and turns before going in, but the identity and plan of the culprit is so clearly telegraphed that I worked it out almost instantly – and you will too, leaving the rest of the film to simply play catch-up. This could be forgiven if the story itself had any real spark, but fun is exceptionally hard to come by here.

Almost every performance – with the exception of Mackey, who easily outshines her far starrier cast mates – is solemn and leaden, big names like Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Letitia Wright, and even French and Saunders all immediately forgettable. Meanwhile, clumsy editing does its best to excise as much of the cancelled Hammer from the plot as it feasibly can, which upsets the entire emotional axis of the story, but does at least spare us from Hammer’s shonky accent.

Even Branagh himself seems to be having a lot less fun this time out than in Orient Express, though it’s his work behind the camera that is most stolid (it makes his current Best Director nomination for Belfast even more inexplicable than it already was). Though the omnipresent Old World glamour does have some irresistible charm on the big screen, abominable CG and green-screen work, mixed with a generally baffling array of shot choices, ensure that you’re never fully immersed in what should be an awe-inspiring Egyptian setting.

Despite its flaws, there’s generally enough going on in Death on the Nile to keep you ticking over from scene to scene and, as an undemanding matinee, its gaudy settings and obvious plot may make for a gentle afternoon’s viewing – it’s never thrilling but it’s never quite outright dull either. But these occasional creaky charms simply aren’t enough to recommend this glitzy-but-stale murder mystery when so many fresher, funnier, smarter, and better-acted alternatives are available.

Death on the Nile is now showing in UK cinemas.