Death on the Nile

Perhaps I liked this even more than Orient Express. Branagh is excellent as Poirot and his black and white flashback is the most powerful scene of the entire movie. Although your can hear the paper rustling as for the detective crime plot, the acting ensemble gets the very most out of it. Emma Mackey is just fantastic. And we get to see Armie the Cannibal in his last role as well. Really, really good. (09/10/2022)

At the beginning Branagh unnecessarily illuminates the reason for the moustache, he probably thinks we viewers are complete idiots, and then in artificial digital sets, coloured like gypsies' nails, he decides to desecrate an otherwise quite nice piece of literature. I wouldn't have expected this from him, someone with a theatre background. (04/19/2022)

An extremely precisely executed whodunit, where I also experienced a rather strange and welcome paradox – I had not read the book and did not know the outcome, but I guessed the culprit quite soon after the fatal act, and it didn’t bother me at all and it didn’t seem like a weakness, but an intention, because Branagh wonderfully focuses the attention on the process of accumulating clues rather than deepening the mystery. Throughout the film, we’re almost completely aligned in our knowledge with Poirot, who sees or hears everything (and when he lies drunk outside the action, he hears everything from innocent and reliable witnesses) and we deduce with him – and can also suspect with him – who is behind everything, but concentrate only on finding the evidence scattered all over the mise-en-scène (or rather, missing from it – the red paint, the lost scarf), which the script brilliantly and rhythmically signifies, as well as the traditionally convoluted mutual past of the actors. Guessing the ending, then, isn't the film's fault, but perhaps its dominant feature – that it can be this entertaining and subtle just in the way it connects the viewer to the investigating protagonist (even emotionally, thanks to the framing prologue and epilogue) is something I really praise Kenneth for. Very nice visuals and great cinematography, which is equal to Steven Spielberg's works in the sophistication of space. I’m already looking forward to my impressions after a second screening. 90 % (02/13/2022)

At times Death on the Nile looks like a modern theatre play, at times like a largely impressive colouring book, which is inappropriate for a film of this type. The whole thing is a little bit flat, sweaty, going for power, or rather for effect. Branagh's Poirot is OK, but the rest of the cast is mostly jerking and prancing around. What's missing are real visuals, decent camera work, real sets and, most importantly, a better plot. (05/02/2022)

Unusually personal considering the character of Poirot, however the pre-title sequence in the trenches is one of the most powerful. It's actually takes a while to get going, it's just that Kenneth Branagh has the whole thing so beautifully shot and voiced that there’s not so much as a though of boredom. The seemingly drawn-out exposition in particular starts to make very good sense later on, and once the anticipated "whodunit" kicks in, it picks up in a big way. All in all, this is a really well done mainstream piece that respectably draws on its classic source material while being utterly professional and ultra-modern in its portrayal. If Branagh delivers another Poirot case in a similar style a few years from now, I’m definitely on it. [75%] (02/10/2022)