Death on the Nile (2022)

Our story opens in 1914 with a unit of Belgian soldiers ordered on a suicide mission.  Luckily, a young soldier proposes a different plan.  This is Hercule Poirot.  The plan works, mostly.  However, Hercule is hit in the face by shrapnel.  His fiancé suggests he grow a mustache to hide the scars.  Twenty-three years later, the mustachioed Hercule visits a blues joint in London.  It just so happens that he witnesses the meeting of Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer).  Doyle is engaged to marry one of Linnet's friends, Jacqueline, but one cannot help but notice an attraction between Simon and Linnet.

Six weeks later, Poirot is in Egypt.  He happens upon Bouc (Tom Bateman), who served as an assistant in Murder on the Orient Express (2017).  Bouc invites him to join him and his mother (Annette Benning) in celebrating a wedding.  On arrival, he discovers that Simon has married Linnet.  A very disappointed Jacqueline has followed them on their various honeymoon stops.  Linnet approached Poirot and asked him to look out for her; she does not feel safe among any of the guests on the tour.  Gee, I wonder who is going to be murdered.

Branagh's Poirot is an action hero.  In both films, he dodges bullets and chases escaping culprits.  There's not a lot of action, but certainly more action than one would see from David Suchet, Peter Ustinov, or Albert Finney.  In addition to a dash of action, Branagh's Poirot is also obsessive compulsive.  He likes his eggs to be the same size, the feet of corpses to point in the same direction, desserts to be served in an amount that can be organized into a triangle (3 or 6, but not 7).  This seemed appropriate and the type of personality that would aid in his manic attention to detail and noticing things that don't quite line up.  I like the OCD, but drop the action hero aspect.

The movie has very anachronistic attitudes.  Bouc is in love with Rosalie (Letitia Wright), who is black.  Now, that would not raise eyebrows in 2022, but would be scandalous in 1937.  The same goes for Poirot's attentions toward Salome (Sophie Okonedo), the aunt of Rosalie.  Then there is Linnet's cousin, Katchadourian.  He is Indian, which hints at further interracial couplings.  None of this is viewed as scandalous or out of the ordinary.  The previous film in the series has this same ahistorical treatment of race when Daisy Ridley's character planned to marry Leslie Odom's character.  Just to hit all the demographics, there is also a lesbian couple, though they are concealing their relationship.  This ahistorical treatment of race has blanketed British films of the past decade (e.g. Mary, Queen of Scots).  On the one hand, I like the idea of depicting racial harmony, but on the other hand this feels like rewriting history.

There is a lot of CGI for the setting.  Pyramids, the sphinx, and other noted locations are all CGI.  As with the anachronistic casting, this took me out of the film.  Rather than thinking how amazing these Egyptian monuments are, I was thinking that the CGI wasn't convincing.  The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) filmed in Egypt and I remember how cool the 'sets' were.  45 years later and it's unconvincing CGI.  One expects better quality over time, not worse.

There is one other nitpick.  It is highly unlikely that a bullet from a dinky .22 caliber pistol could go through one person's torso and still have enough kinetic energy left to inflict a lethal chest wound on another person.  I'm sure that most gun aficionados groaned when that happened.

It is okay.  I prefer Peter Ustinov's Death on the Nile (1978) over this one.  Likewise, I thought Albert Finney's Murder on the Orient Express (1974) was better than Branagh's adaptation.