MOVIE REVIEW: DEATH ON THE NILE is very mediocre

It’s a big week for Kenneth Branagh. He got three Oscar nominations on Tuesday: best director, best original screenplay, and best picture, all for “Belfast,” his winning if more than a mite slight autobiographical drama. Now comes “Death on the Nile,” Branagh’s second directorial go at Agatha Christie.

Death on the Nile is Branagh's second foray into the works of Dame Christie. With Nile, Branagh reprises his starring role on Murder on the Orient Express (which he also directed) as the celebrated detective, Hercule Poirot, the enigmatic, somewhat pompous, and noticeably OCD, mustachioed hero of 33 of Dame Christie's novels.

Before Death on the Nile gets to this emotional place, however, it drags its feet through an occasionally off-kilter aesthetic experience. Each time the story stops at some famous location (for instance, the Great Pyramids, or the tomb of Rameses II), these exteriors are brought half to life through an awkward digital un-reality that is distracting at best, and at worst a direct clash with its attempts to feel grand and exotic.

It takes Death on the Nile far longer than it should to reach its most impactful moments, but actor-director Kenneth Branagh cares deeply enough about Detective Poirot to make it work. While serviceable as a murder mystery, and surprisingly plain as a story of opulence, the film ultimately succeeds when Branagh turns the camera away from the digital settings and occasionally fake supporting performances, and points it at himself.

A very mediocre film that mainly relies on the scene in which it is revealed who the murderer is. Everything before that scene feels like a long and boring run-up through poorly written characters, a story that has no depth and long scenes that have no impact. The setting of Egypt is nice but clearly feels like a green screen studio

“Murder on the Orient Express” came out in 2017. The distance between Northern Ireland, c. 1969, and Egypt in 1937 is even greater than you might think. That movie was fun, if overstuffed. This one’s just overstuffed.

Another contrast is more in the way of an oddity. Okonedo and Wright, who are British, affect American accents. Bening and Hammer, who are American, affect English ones. All do so quite capably. Gadot, who’s supposed to be veddy, veddy British, speaks in her usual Israeli-accented English.

5/10 for me.