Death on the Nile - 2022
Given Agatha Christie’s place in stone as a titan of literature in my personal estimation, any work that renders her delightful yarns boring or somnambulant can only be described as a cardinal sin. And yet that is precisely what Branagh manages here for the first 60 plus minutes.
It’s not all his fault either. The Armie Hammer onscreen here is as blank and vapid as he is debauched in the real world. Gadot is not much better. Together, their chemistry admixes like a middle school science project gone terribly awry.
Fortunately for us all, the second hour picks up. Once Poirot starts whisker turning, speechifying, and bombastically making accusations, we all awaken from our stupor. We spend the better part of the next 45 minutes poised for the reveal, scooping up what clues we can find lying around the ship’s mostly poorly rendered CG set.
At last it comes. Aaand then it goes. Alas, our list of crimes uncovered lands like a dull thud. It appears the joke was on us all along.
Comments