127 min | PG-13 | February 11, 2022 | 20th Century Studios
Hercule Poirot takes a honeymoon cruise down the Nile, and a body turns up before dessert. Kenneth Branagh surrounds his detective with a glamorous cast and a digital Egypt that never feels like a real place. The mystery gets solved. The movie does not.
Hercule Poirot boards a luxury steamer on the Nile for a wedding party turned honeymoon cruise. The newlyweds are the heiress Linnet Ridgeway-Doyle and her husband, and a jealous former friend follows the group upriver. Someone dies, and the great detective must read the guests for a killer. Kenneth Branagh frames this Agatha Christie mystery as a story about love as a form of madness. He opens with a prologue that hands Poirot a tragic backstory to explain the man behind the mustache. The film wants that romance to carry the weight, and it cannot.
Kenneth Branagh plays Poirot with clipped precision and a wounded interior he keeps returning to. He is watchable, and he is also working overtime to turn the detective into a tragic figure. Gal Gadot plays Linnet Ridgeway-Doyle as a woman who knows her wealth makes her a target, and she has presence but little to do once the plot machinery starts. Tom Bateman returns as Bouc and gives the film its only loose, human energy. Annette Bening plays his mother Euphemia with a sharp, disapproving stillness, and Russell Brand underplays Linus Windlesham as a jilted suitor who has made his peace with losing. The ensemble is full of capable actors stranded in thin roles.
Branagh directs from a script by Michael Green, who adapts Christie’s novel. The Egypt on screen is almost entirely digital, and it shows. The pyramids and the river and the great temple carry the weightless sheen of a backdrop rendered by a computer. The actors never look like they share air with the landscape. The cinematography lights the interiors of the steamer with handsome gold and shadow, and those rooms feel real in a way the exteriors never do. The score swells to insist on emotion the scenes have not earned, and the editing lets long stretches sit still while Poirot circles the suspects until the middle stretch sags.
This is a handsome, competent mystery that mistakes production design for tension. Branagh clearly loves Poirot and wants the character to mean more than a parlor trick. The added backstory and the romance never connect to the murder plot in a way that pays off. The film moves through its reveals with the dutiful air of a property fulfilling an obligation. There is craft here and there is spectacle. There is no urgency, and a Christie mystery without urgency is just a tour of nicely dressed rooms.