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.

I hope a genius like Kenneth Branagh can find another outlet for his directorial style and leave Dame Christie alone. I guess he fancies himself Poirot and wants that role. Like with Orient Express, he is not all that interesting. If anything, he gets a little too flamboyant at times. The story is great in the book. Here it plods along, taking nearly the first half for anything to happen. It's more than exposition. In one scene there is a menu of characters presented to the viewer. Show them. Don't tell them. I have to say I was disappointed because I was told by a friend that this was really an excellent movie. Live and learn.

I don't really like the first "Murder On The Orient Express" so I watch this with little expectations. And as expected, this movie is a let down.

The acting is average. CGI is mediocre. And the story is weak. When the murder happens I can already tell who's the killer, and how the murderer did it.

I don't understand why they add the war scene. Just to tell audience why Poirot grow magnificent moustache? That totally unnecessary.

I've read a lot of Poirot novel, this is a different way to depict him. And in a bad way.

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.

I love Agatha Christie novels and want so badly to enjoy big screen interpretations of her stories. I think her writing is what makes Death on the Nile work better than it would otherwise. It's a solid mystery that has plenty of good twists and turns because there are multiple layers of mystery beyond just the murders. Thankfully, it has been long enough since I read the book so I didn't totally remember the actual solution to the whodunit. However, I figured things out relatively early because Branagh struggles to deliver these type of mysteries with any subtlety, and that's a shame. You'd think it would be obvious that you don't want someone almost literally shouting "Pay attention, this is a clue!" but that's what we have here. Also, while I said I guessed the truth early, I just mean early in relation to when the first murder occurred. Because it takes almost half the runtime for things to truly get going.

Some of the character work in Death on the Nile was solid, and I appreciated seeing a couple people play against type. They take a lot of time to establish the relationships between all these characters which I would ordinarily appreciate. It's too bad Branagh (or the studio) thought we were too dumb to follow all the groundwork they were laying out, so they literally had a character painstakingly explain to Poirot everything all over again. He might as well have broken the fourth wall and just spoken straight to the audience since it's so clearly all for our benefit. The ending was also corny and handled poorly, plus some of the green-screen of Nile scenery in the background was horribly shoddy. All that being said, I still appreciated aspects of Death on the Nile. It's a genre I love, written by an author I love, and starring a detective I love. Considering all that, it's no wonder I managed to have a good time with a film that really isn't put together all that well.