Death on the Nile (2022) Review
This weekend the second entry in Kenneth Branagh’s murder mystery franchise, Death on the Nile hits theaters. This is a sequel to 2017’s Murder on The Orient Express which was also written and directed by Kenneth Branagh. How is this movie? Let’s get started!
The Good:
For me the best thing about this movie is the cast. This is just a fun set of actors playing these fun characters. Both of these Kenneth Branagh movies always have great casts, and I really enjoy the number of actors in this movie. Kenneth Branagh is this world class actor who plays Hercule Pirot really well. You buy him as this detective trying to solve this mystery, and you can see the gears turning in his head as he’s trying to figure it out. You also have the beautiful Gal Gadot as this fancy rich bachelor, and her character is really different from Wonder Woman but she plays this character equally as well.
It’s also a very slickly produced murder mystery. Kenneth Branagh has been directing movies for the past 33 years so he’s a seasoned pro at directing big movies like this. The budget for this movie is about $100 million and they poured this movie into getting a great cast, great production design, and beautiful locations. All of it is done with lots of prestige by a great director.
Another positive for this movie is the direction by Kenneth Branagh who just knows how to direct certain scenes really well. The first 5-10 minutes are done in black and white telling Pirot’s origin stories. And it’s handled well with the shots he uses. Also, as you move into the third act of the movie and the answers get put on the table Branagh uses great directorial techniques.
Finally, there are a few solid jokes in this movie that made me chuckle. They aren’t these big over the top jokes but are solid jokes that come from the character personalities. Pirot probably gets the most jokes
The Bad:
The big thing here is as you move into the third act of the movie it becomes very straight forward and predictable. I was able to put together some of the big twists and turns that were supposed to be surprising. And I think part of the problem is that so much of Agatha Christie’s work has been adapted into many movies and tv shows. So when you adapted one of Agatha Christie’s books you can see some of the twists and turns coming. I don’t think anybody will be surprised by the big twist with who the murderer of the movie was.
And the movie takes a while to get going. It’s about an hour into the movie until the victim. And I’m not sure if the movie needed to take as long as it did to get going. Like I said earlier we get the backstory of Pirot in the first 5-10 minutes of the movie, and that could have been cut from the movie and it wouldn’t have changed. We would have gotten the murder and the actual plot of the movie quicker.
Finally, this movie seems to check off every box that modern day movies need. It has a big budget with an A-list cast that is slickly produced. So it just felt generic with the way the movie was done and put together.
Final Thoughts: In general, Death on the Nile is a good enough murder mystery with a great cast, slickly produced but a familiar plot with not enough to offer beyond that. So I think this is a movie that everybody will have fun with, but it’ll be forgettable fun.
The Score: 8.0/10 (B-)
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