Death on the Nile

A gorgeous whodunit built like a Swiss watch

Death on the Nile (2022)

In theaters; 3/5

In any good mystery lots of facts flow by, and it’s the job of the detective (and the audience playing along) to put them in the right order. Agatha Christie is a towering icon of this kind of story; her work has been in the popular consciousness for almost a century now, and for good reason. It’s good stuff. Part of what makes it good is that in the hands of a skilled movie-adaptation, the essence of the story can still be thrilling even as details change to make the whole thing a little fresher. Those details appear in rapid order, and some of them matter and some don’t. Armie Hammer is never going to be a relevant leading man, but as the hunky dude in an ensemble he’s excellent. Russell Brand is capable of selling a serious role in a totally believable way. Kenneth Branagh disappears into whatever role he plays while still being instantly recognizable (even if his Poirot is a little sadder and lonelier than fans might prefer). Gal Gadot is impossibly beautiful and utterly magnetic, and the 1930s aesthetic fits her like a glove. 

In fact, “impossibly beautiful” is a great way to describe this film. Christie’s work (and particularly her Poirot stuff) operates in a very specific time and place, with very specific kinds of characters. The action takes place in a semi-fantasyland of society columns and pressed tablecloths and three-piece suits and after-dinner brandy in “the lounge.” This particular story also adds the popularly stylized “elite Europeans traveling in Egypt in the 1930s” look where everybody is always impeccably dressed in spotless white and everything is always placed just so (thanks to a massive population of barely-there servants). This film adaptation adds some historical relevance to the cast of characters (swapping in a black jazz singer and some bearding lesbians, among others) in ways that make period sense without being in your face but which people weren’t ready for when Christie wrote the original in 1937, and the overall plot is dramatically improved for it. The gentle insertion of diverse characters into the super-style of the period makes the film absolutely stunning to look at, as well as listen to. It may seem incongruous to set a Christie mystery to the smokin’ hot blues of the 1930s, but the total package is just gorgeous.

If there’s a flaw, it’s that the action is still pretty by-the-numbers. Nothing you think you know is right (as usual), but the twists and turns and big reveal are twists and turns and a big reveal that mystery fans have all seen before. There’s a temptation to dismiss a movie like this as formulaic, but this is one of the classic mystery stories of all time; it’s formulaic because it is the formula. While that probably kills the rewatchability of the film for most people, it’s absolutely worth the time to take it in once. 

3 stars of 5: It’s a marvelous grown-up date movie, but it’s not much more than that.