The success of Knives Out and Murder on the Orient Express has led to a full-throated return of the keep-em-guessing murder mystery
Surprise is not much of a factor in Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh’s second gaudy, glossy all-star adaptation of an Agatha Christie chestnut. As with its predecessor, 2017’s marginally worse Murder on the Orient Express, this old-school mystery pulls from a source text so well-known that its twists have practically become embedded genre tropes; even if you don’t know the oft-told story, you can guess your way through it on cliches and character types alone.
Decked out with chintzy CGI, stiff performances and enough processed cheese to fill the Nile, it’s not exactly a good film — even “proficient” feels like a stretch — but it is an oddly comforting one. Watching Branagh’s absurdly moustachioed Hercule Poirot waddle through the motions of supposedly expert crime-solving — as bloodied, satin-clad corpses pile up around him — offers equivalent satisfaction to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle on a rainy Sunday: you know what the outcome is going to be, but there’s something soothing in putting it all together. If it’s a murder-mystery you aren’t already familiar with, so much the better, but the genre’s process-based pleasures are consistent either way. A good whodunnit, or even an attractively bad one, is the fictional equivalent of Marie Kondo organising your sock drawer. Continue reading...
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