It’s a bleak opening to what is otherwise a sun-drenched picture. Even by the standards of recent Hollywood movies, this is an origin story no one was asking for. And so it’s no surprise that his dumb, lumbering adaptation of Death on the Nile starts with that most needless of things: the legend of how Hercule Poirot got his moustache, involving the wartime trenches of north-west Belgium. But Branagh, of late, has become a maker of big, unsubtle movies like 2011’s Thor, 2015’s Cinderella and 2020’s Artemis Fowl. For Christie, the 300-odd pages of the novel are all that counts. Here is an encapsulation of the fundamental difference between Christie and Branagh. Where Agatha Christie’s novel commences with a pub landlord speculating over a society heiress’s Rolls Royce, this 2022 version opens on a blood-soaked First World War battlefield. And yet, despite the blockbuster appeal of our quaint Belgian sleuth, there is no preparing for how Death on the Nile, the latest chapter in Kenneth Branagh’s reimagining of the character, raises its curtain. Other than a certain Baker Street resident, no detective has been afforded as high a cinematic profile. What do people expect from Hercule Poirot on the big screen?
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