Starring Kenny Branagh, Armie Hammer, Gal Gadot, Rose Leslie, Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Emma Mackey, Sphie Okonedo and Letitia Wright. Written by Michael 'That's a hard fucking no' Green, directed by Kenny Branagh. 126 minutes long and costing $90 million dollars.
Hercule Poirot gets his face blown off in the WW1, grows a really stupid moustache to cover up the mess and 24 years later takes a river cruise down the Nile on a Club 18-30 'Boat Party' where, although he fails to prevent a shit-load of people from getting murdered does somehow manage to solve the murders but only after 125 minutes have elapsed, thus cutting it really fine. If he'd taken just one minute longer, the film would have ended and the butler would have got away with it. Oops, spoiler.
Anyway, once again a remake of a classic Agatha Christie movie, this time of the far superior 1978 version starring a similarly stellar cast and Peter Ustinov as Poirot, incidentally did you know that 26 different actors have portrayed the little Belgium over the years, including Charles Laughton and Orson Welles!
Overall this was quite enjoyable, but let down by some terrible CGI and some really jarring and unnecessary camera moves and angles, something that Branagh did in Murder on the Orient Express, that really pulls you out of the moment. There's also the need for a very unnecessary origin story for Poirot's moustache that adds nothing to the character, seriously Hollywood we don't need origin stories for our characters, we're big enough to accept them ready formed. Oh and a very out of period sequence at the beginning of the movie with some truly inaccurate and embarrassing dirty dancing in a London Jazz club that advertises with a neon sign that reads: LIVE MUSIC. It's 1937, what other sort of music would there be?
The deduction takes a long time to get going, actually as do the murders, but once it finally gets going it's entertaining and well handled and you should be able to work out who dunnit through diligent detection and deduction.
Looks nice, good costumes, and a good assortment of actors doing stuff well. And will no doubt spawn this future pub quiz question. Q. What film saw Dr. Frankenstein, Wonder Woman and the Lone Ranger team up to solve a murder?
7/10
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