Death on the Nile

The book is simple. The book is not a long book just short of a 300 pages, so why the unnecessary changes to the characters from the book? It either broke interesting characters or completely removed them. Some characters from the book are combined in a single character in the movie and not for the best. WHY??? These changes completely ruined the smooth structure of the book to "simplify" it for modern audiences I suppose but again, WHY? The book is not that difficult to follow. Another thing that ruined the movie is the horrendous CGI. The CGI looks like a cutscene from a Playstation 3 game. The green screen OMG looks like someone cutout the character from a green screen with his phone and then pasted on a badly drawn background. And lastly the acting. I'm sorry but most of the cast were bad, which is sad because most of them proved their talent in other projects (except Gal Gadot. All she has is a beautiful smile) Skip this movie. If you want a good detective story go read the book. It's not a long story. You'll probably finish the book a day. 3-4 days if english is not your first language. Yes it's that easy to read through and understand it.

Death on the Nile fails to meet the high standard of its predecessor Murder on the Orient Express. That being said the film is beautifully shot and the final act is an overall fun mystery ride. The film is generally well acted and directed. One negative is that the audience is just told things a little too much. Murder on the Orient Express had a little more set up and the audience felt more of a part of the mystery early on. That aspect of storytelling felt diminished in this sequel. The mystery does not really pick up until the final act and even then some things are just explained by Detective Poirot without any of the tantalizing intrigue that the first film possessed. Murder on the Orient Express had an amazing twist with good people doing a bad thing which made the audience seriously reflect on the right and wrong of the crime. Unfortunately, Death on the Nile's big twist of bad people doing a bad thing for money felt a little flat. Murder on the Orient Express was a work of art. Death on the Nile is a decent mystery movie.

What is it with Branagh and Poirot? Why does he feel the need to modernize Agatha Christie's work so? If he has no respect for the original, or no faith that it can succeed with modern audiences, why not adapt instead a modern novel? Because this adaptation is thoroughly fake.

Poirot feels the need to be running around after suspects and waving (even shooting) guns. Instead of grey cells, Branagh gives him plenty of emotions, a tragic love story, even a motivation for his moustache. He sure is not Poirot. And why? Just adapt a modern detective story, with their traumatized detectives.

The strength to this story, apart from the clever trick the killer used and the setting, is in the characters. And what do we have? Instead of 1930s characters, we get a collection of 21st century identity politics talking points, lecturing about racism, sexism and lesbophobia. Seriously, if that's what you want, why not adapt a modern story instead of one written and set in the early 20th century? Are they unable to do a period piece now?

The CGI-fest cinematography looks expensive but also fake. Not as fake as the previous Poirot movie by Branagh (Murder on the Orient Express), but still fake.

All in all a missed opportunity. Watchable, but try to forget that it's supposed to be a Poirot story, and when it is supposed to be set.

I don't always agree with the professional critics, but I have to say that I do agree this adaption, is, without a doubt, the most turgid and poorly executed Christie adaption that there has been.

There is over an hour of the film before the mystery even begins and that interminable hour consists of exposition that leave the characters as two dimensional as when it started. And half of the characters seem shoveled in with no purpose whatsoever. E.g. Sophie Okonedo. She is a great actress. Perhaps the best in this cast. I strongly recommend people see her Hollow Crown and Hotel Rwanda. But her character (or that of the character's niece) in Death on the Nile is what? Serves what plot purpose? (Answer: none)

The actual "solving" of the mystery has to be the most predictable Christie adaption ever. It is a outright "Cui bono?" It makes it clear this is written for very low brow audience.

Just too much unnecessary stuff in this film. From unnecessary (or just contrived) scenes ... to unnecessarily overdone CGI imagery. And don't get me started about the unnecessary historical inaccuracies. It all just distracted me from the film itself...which I found to be overconfidently flashy and show-offish. Pretentious.