If you liked Murder on the Orient Express, get ready for a new adventure of Hercule Poirot played by Kenneth Branagh. The director, after opening the channel with his masterpiece Belfast, is now launching Death on the Nile, a new episode of the series that adapts the mystery novels of Agatha Christie. It solves the work standing out with a note and even improving the result of the previous one.
Something as simple as the fact that most fans of the genre know the story more and more than enough plays against it. … but that is not an obstacle to enjoying the film, since it manages to give it a dramatic quality and a tempo that makes us immerse ourselves in the narration immediately. In short, it’s a movie that draws you in.
One of the things that makes Death on the Nile such an engaging movie is that it he takes his time to develop the characters and doesn’t stay on the surface, but tries to take us to the depths of his being.
Forget the archetypal Poirot whose only purpose seems to be to solve a crime, because The film does not start with the mystery but by getting into the trenches to meet a young Hercule (Branagh rejuvenated through a very well measured CGI) who puts his insight at the service of his country, although this ends up coming out much more expensive than he would have thought.
After that very important flashback in which he reveals to us what would literally and figuratively mark him forever, we find him on vacation in Egypt, where he meets with Bouc, an old friend who is accompanying a couple on their honeymoon with an exte nsa guest list.
Mystery movies that manage to keep the intrigue until the end
The newlywed is Linnet Ridgeway, a rich woman with many enemies, and her new husband is Simon Doyle, a man who He broke off his engagement to his girlfriend, Jacqueline de Bellefort when he met Linnet just a few months ago. Intrigued, Poirot joins the wedding party.
Jacqueline soon emerges as a great threat and a ghost from the past: she haunts them from one side to the other, making it clear that she will not let them rest and that she will be willing to do anything. thing to recover Simon.
After embarking on an imposing steamboat to travel the Nile, a murder will truncate the idyllic trip and will reveal the network of betrayals and crossed interests that exist between the guests. Knowing that the killer hand of crime is on board, Poirot must put the puzzle together and pinpoint the culprit before there are new victims.
Death on the Nile – Image gallery (4 images)
Love, leitmotif of a tragic whodunit
As we said at the beginning, the film has an atypical way of arr ancar, given that it is at all times a film about love in all its facets. Idyllic love, frustrated love, fake love, passionate love and destructive love… but also last love, which comes as a second chance.
Thus, with several sequences about the past shot in black and white against the background of World War I, we better understand our protagonist and to what extent this case affects him personally, making him relive some of the most painful passages in his life and reminding him of what has led him to be like it’s already being so alone, engrossed in your cases.
Spectacular settings, intimate stories
At this point we have to talk about the cast: Branagh is once again crowned as an extremely bold and perceptive Poirot, but also very human and vulnerable, with major flaws that They even lead to seem little compassionate with the pain of others and quite prejudiced. A character fixes the page at a given moment and puts him in his place (it’s something memorable).
The great star that shines with its own light, proclaiming itself at a given moment as the queen of Egypt (what great Cleopatra would be, in fact) is Gal Gadot: a cinematographic beast that eats the camera every time she appears on screen. She makes a titanic effort to overshadow her fictional competitor, Emma Mackey (Maeve in Sex Education).
The third party, almost disappeared of the promotion of the film after the scandals that have sent his acting career to the brink, is Armie Hammer. They make up the love triangle that marks the entire plot and are well supported by a good handful of secondary characters who come to defend less relevant plots but in which love, the great theme of the film, is always present.
Don’t let this statement confuse you: this is a mystery movie in which, of course, there are final revelations that make everything fit together well and in which there is even a little more violence than is usually shown this type of tape.
In the technical sections, there are few objections to the remarkable work of Patrick Doyle (Artemis Fowl) in composing the soundtrack and Haris Zambarloukos (Belfast) as head of photography.
The staging required yes or yes a lot of chroma and model since the temple of Abu Simbel was moved in 68, but the film offers such a feast to lovers of Eqipto that it is appreciated the walk through those dream places at a time when they were m much less exploited. Watch out for Branagh’s pulse in the direction, because it’s firecracker. Enjoy it!