"Death on the Nile": That's why Kenneth Branagh's remake disappoints!

Created: 2/9/2022Updated: 2/9/2022 5:19 PM

By: Katja Kraft

Although Armie Hammer and Gal Gadot (middle) are convincing as newlyweds, director and leading actor Kenneth Branagh (right) has charged the story with too much morality and pathos.

©Rob Youngson/Disney

Kenneth Branagh has reimagined Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile.

But the Disney remake does not come close to the first film adaptation with Sir Peter Ustinov from 1978.

Perhaps this remake didn't stand a chance from the start for anyone who knows the 1978 original.

Well, that's not true.

Because Kenneth Branagh's first remake of a beloved Agatha Christie adaptation was definitely appreciated as a cinema critic.

Even more than that: Back then, in 2017, this newspaper enthusiastically judged “Murder on the Orient Express”: “The predecessor looks like a jerking regional train compared to the Transrapid compared to the newcomer.” To stick with such comparisons, you have to Unfortunately, Branagh's remake of "Death on the Nile", which is now starting, has to say: The predecessor seems like a torrent compared to a sluggish trickle compared to the newcomer.

"Death on the Nile" is set in the studio in London

The 61-year-old Brit, who is once again directing and playing the lead role of detective Hercule Poirot, cannot be accused of not having done everything in terms of magnificent scenery.

Alone: ​​It is too much of the well-intentioned.

Anyone who liked "Death on the Nile" from 1978 looks disappointed at the ship, which this time provides the backdrop for three murders.

The cleanly polished planks, which never got a drop of Nile water because they were laid in the London studio, have none of the charm of the old planks on the paddle steamer of the film adaptation 40 years ago.

As reported, many scenes of the original "Death on the Nile" were shot on the SS Sudan, on which Agatha Christie found the inspiration for her crime novel.

It is questionable,

Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer are convincing as a newly married couple who are newly in love, as is Emma Mackey as the scheming ex-fiancée who follows them on their honeymoon.

Unfortunately, Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green take the closing quote from the first film too seriously: "The great ambition of women is the encouragement to love," says Molière.

2022's Death on the Nile is less a fascinating detective game than a morally charged treatise on love and friendship.

A familiar character from Murder on the Orient Express returns

It starts with Poirot in a flashback in the trenches, later wounded in the hospital.

He is not an over-the-top, precisely analyzing, French-speaking ("Belgian!") observer like Sir Peter Ustinov once embodied him so captivatingly, but a person with deep (not only mental) scars, who himself knew love and lost it .

So that Poirot can show even more of these feelings, he is given a friend, Bouc (Tom Bateman), the character already known from “Murder on the Orient Express”.

Because Bouc is in love with the black singer's daughter Rosalie Otterbourne (Letitia Wright), which in turn is objected to by his mother, who in turn has hired Poirot to investigate Rosalie, the film ship gets into increasingly murky waters.

nothing but tributaries of racism, breach of trust and jealousy open up.

This destroys the actual flow of the story and distracts from Christie's so artfully staged case.

The ensemble of the "Death on the Nile" film adaptation from 1978 with Sir Peter Ustinov (back 4th from left), Mia Farrow (front 2nd from left) and Maggie Smith (back 3rd from left). . right).

© Ullstein

In one of the first scenes, Hercule Poirot sits in fine twins with toast, boiled eggs and a silver tea service in the Egyptian desert in front of the pyramids.

This caricature should definitely have been retained.

But every era gets the films it deserves.

This one has beautiful smooth pictures, beautiful smooth people, beautiful smooth costumes.

Lots of pathos and feeling.

Lots of talk about what people are willing to do for love (thanks, we would have understood it that way too).

And a lot of political correctness.

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Windlesham (Russell Brand), for example, announces at the end that he is now going to West Africa to help people.

Very decent.

But unfortunately also a bit boring.

Too bad.