Scandals, delays... Poirot’s toughest case?
Death On The Nile
Cert: 12A, 2hrs 7mins ★★★★★
Marry Me
Cert: 12A, 1hr 52 mins ★★★★★
Uncharted
Cert: 12A, 1hr 56mins ★★★★★★
Flee
Cert: 15A 1HR 29 MINS ★★★★★★
Oh, mon Dieu, as the great Hercule Poirot might say. Where to start, as Kenneth Branagh’s long-awaited, much-postponed,scandal-hitremake of Death On The Nile finally staggers into our cinemas?
Well, let’s begin with the astonishing array of accents. There’s Branagh himself doing Belgian, which, as he’s once again playing Agatha Christie’s magnificently moustachioed Belgian detective, is fair enough.
But then there’s American Annette Bening doing British but mainly shouting, English Sophie Okonedo doing Deep South American and being the best thing in it, and Scottish Rose Leslie playing a French maid.
With Gal Gadot doing something unplaceable and the disgraced Armie Hammer (multiple allegations of sexual abuse, rape and even cannibalism surfaced after filming was completed) not really bothering at all, it comes as something of a relief that the inexplicably cast Russell Brand is not allowed to say anything. At least for the first hour.
Throw in stop-start editing, exhaustingly restless camera-work and expensive visual effects trying ever so hard to recreate Egypt in the late 1930s and there’s no doubt Branagh’s second go at both directing
and playing Poirot – his star-studded version of Murder On The Orient Express was released in 2017 – gets off to a problematic start.
But, mes amis, just as you’re longing for Peter Ustinov and the hugely enjoyable 1978 film, it does get better, as wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gadot) and her handsome new husband Simon (Hammer) depart on a honeymoon cruise down the Nile.
They’re joined by a free-loading party of friends and relations, the inevitable lawyer and doctor, and stalked by Simon’s understandably furious former fiancee, Jacqueline de Bellefort, played by the excellent Emma Mackey from TV’s Sex Education.
Then the murderer strikes, Poirot starts exercising ‘zee leetle grey cells’ and we’re away.
I rather like Branagh’s slightly more red-blooded interpretation of Poirot (after David Suchet’s iconic performance, he had to do something different) and enjoyed the stylish black and white flashback that movingly explain the origins of the moustache. But despite an obvious improvement in the quality of the screenplay in the second half, this still feels like a Christie adaptation that never really makes it out of third gear.
Marry Me is essentially Notting Hill in reverse, in that it begins with the world-famous singer Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) marrying totally unknown single father and maths teacher Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson) as a face-saving publicity stunt when she belatedly discovers that her actual fiance and fellow pop star, Bastian (played by the Colombian singer, Maluma) has been unfaithful.
Ah, as fellow devotees of romantic-comedy will have quickly worked out, what if – rather than
having their fake nuptials instantly unwound with the help of a large cheque and a signed non-disclosure agreement – Kat and Charlie actually fell in love?
On paper this shouldn’t really work. The premise is slight and predictable and Lopez, at 51, and Wilson, at 53, are surely a little too old to properly convince.
On screen, however, it’s a romcom treat, which is helped by some lovely set-pieces, a well-polished screenplay and by the fact that Lopez – obviously playing a version of herself – has always been good at this sort of thing. So that’s Valentine’s evening sorted out.
Uncharted has been a popular video game for almost 15 years and is very much in the adventuring, historical treasure-hunting traditions of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft. But unless you’re a young active player or a former fan, it’s difficult to see how anyone else is going to get much out of a new and distinctly underwhelming film adaptation.
Yes, Spiderman star Tom Holland plays the central character of Nathan Blake and yes, director Ruben Fleischer has both Venom and Zombieland to his name, but the story feels flat, linear and distinctly lacking in convincing jeopardy. The film has obvious echoes of both the Indiana Jones films and Pirates Of The Caribbean, while the supporting cast fail to rise to the occasion. Dates for cinema and streaming release to be confirmed.
It’s good to see the likes of Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau putting some of their hard-earned film-star cash into Flee, a featurelength Danish animation that tells the extraordinary story of one particular Afghan refugee.
It’s inventive, moving, honest almost to a fault, and this week picked up no less than three Oscar nominations. Clever stuff.