Pyramid scheme
KENNETH BRANAGH’S BACK TO CRACK ANOTHER AGATHA CHRISTIE MYSTERY
AT THE end of director Sir Kenneth Branagh’s handsome 2017 reimagining of a snowbound Murder On The Orient Express, a police officer approaches Hercule Poirot with news of a dastardly deed on the River Nile.
That teasing nod to a second investigation for the extravagantly moustachioed Belgian sleuth, played by Branagh, is realised five years later in an equally lavish case torn from the pages of Agatha Christie and adapted by Michael Green.
A monochrome prologue set in 1914 wartime trenches, which fleshes out Poirot’s anguished romantic past, is Green’s grim invention but, for the most part, his script adheres to the watertight plot of the 1930s novel.
In a 1937 London club, Poirot serendipitously witnesses the sexually charged first encounter of heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) and Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer), fiancé of Linnet’s best friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey).
Six weeks later, Simon and Linnet are married and celebrating nuptials at the First Cataract Hotel in Aswan. Champagne corks fly for a guest list from the bride’s side of the family: her maid Louise Bourget (Rose Leslie), cousin and lawyer Andrew Katchadourian (Ali Fazal), aristocratic former fiancé Dr Linus Windlesham (Russell Brand), godmother Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders) and nursemaid companion Mrs Bowers (Dawn French), plus longtime friend Bouc (Tom Bateman) and his artistic mother Euphemia (Annette Bening).
Musical entertainment comes from jazz singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo), managed by her niece Rosalie (Letitia Wright).
A jilted and openly jealous Jacqueline gatecrashes festivities and Linnet implores Poirot – coincidentally in Egypt – to intervene.
The wedding party hastily relocates to a luxurious paddle steamer, the Karnak, but Linnet’s unease intensifies because “when you have money, no one is ever really your friend”.
Death On The Nile invests too much time in Poirot’s past at the expense of the wedding party’s tangled histories and their simmering resentments.
If the sleuth returns for a third investigation, that approach will reap rewards but within the confines of this murderous interlude, impeccable style dances merrily over substance.
In cinemas now