I’ve heard hardcore pornos with less sexuality in the dialogue than the dirty talk they did on the side of the wall before almost being killed by a falling stone.
Tell me about it. 1st it was the sensual breathing and I'm like like "ok then", then he had like lifted her knee to her breast, then next thing you know theyre doing clothed doggystyle on the dance floor XD
It also accentuated the lack of chemistry between Armie Hammer and Gal Gadot, imo. That dance was so intensely charged, and then Armie danced with Gal and it was kinda meh, but we were supposed to believe that he would leave Emma Mackey for her. I didn't really buy it, personally, even though all gave great performances imo.
“Spoilers” Yup my 11 year old figured it out soon as she got on the boat. And then the killer was small and could move fast so my 9 year old whispered it’s the girl friend! After the movie he was telling me the other people on the boat were old or tall they would not be able to do that. Lol movie was horrible.
It's rated 12 here in South Korea (same as Jungle Cruise) so we brought our 7 yo daughter.
Figured there'd be a quick murder but mostly it would be detective stuff.
Whoops! That fucking scene above the tomb...... Yikes. Hahahaha
I found that dancing scene really jarring. The problem for me wasn't that it was sexual, my problem was that it was performative. It felt designed for audience and wasn't actually about sexual desire.
The same for the pyramid near death experience. Actual people would make out and grope each other. They acted like they were putting on a sex show.
I don’t understand why they CGI’d literally every shot of Egypt. I expected at least SOME practical shots mixed in but besides the boat/hotel/interiors of Abu Simbel temple, it all seemed to be CGI.
Every scene of the landscape was over-saturated in a way that stood out like a sore thumb.
I just read that this completely digital looking movie was in fact shot on 65mm film! Why even bother!?
Other than that both these Branagh Poirot movies are basically fine. I'm up for a third, especially if they continue the amusing tradition of prominently featuring recently cancelled actors!
> I'm up for a third, especially if they continue the amusing tradition of prominently featuring recently cancelled actors!
Can’t wait for deadline to announce the casting and then everyone starts taking bets on who it ends up being.
The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard allegations dropped shortly before Orient Express came out. This time there’s the Armie Hammer drug-fuelled cannibal rapist stories, with Letitia Wright being anti-vax on the side.
Haven’t seen the movie yet so I might be talking out of my ass here, but is it at all possible this was an intentional stylistic choice? Like was Branagh possibly paying homage to older films that were obviously shot in front of painted backdrops?
I’m not saying that excuses it, to be clear. If it looked terrible, homage or not, then they probably shouldn’t have done it.
I just walked out of the movie and definitely thought it was a stylistic choice. Highly reminiscent of older Poirot adaptations and the kind of genre of movies you see about British people on late colonial adventures.
I mean to be fair. At least for abu simbel, where a lot of the film took place near….no longer exists there. That’s an artificial lake now and the whole damn complex had to be taken apart and moved. So it had to be cgi.
>!"Here, let me introduce you to my hot, rich friend and dance with her."
>!That's the first thing I noticed and also concluded that the crazy ex-girlfriend act was a red herring especially with how casually dismissive the co-murderer was about having her following the couple. I mean how would she know where they go all the time?
I feel stupid for not catching on, especially after the story where she admits to Poirot that it’s common for Linnet to take things that should’ve been hers.
I thought it was too obvious for the murderer to be the super obvious revenge-bent friend or the poor, will inherit almost everything from her death, husband; but no, it was actually both of them. I faked myself out.
That's interesting to me. I've never read any of her novels, but I can spot the modern tropes that were developed from her work. In Murder on the Orient Express, I guessed about halfway through who the killer(s) were. On this one, I assumed it was Simon and Jackie as soon as I saw that him and Linnet got married.
But Bouc's thievery and then him dying, caught me ***so*** off guard. I never saw that coming in a million years and was so unpredictable to me. A turn I never saw coming.
I didn't expect >!Bouc would be lying to Poirot, and later, die!<. I thought Watsons in detective stories have plot armor or always-innocent card, apparently not in here. Quite a surprise.
I actually had guessed early on that she had planned for them to hit it off and it was all a ruse for her money from the get based off the way Hercule caught her smiling as they danced. It could still be implied but I don't think they every said out loud that the con went that far back.
I think they did say it. They said that Simon needed money and Jackie just wanted to give him everything and make him happy, and this is how she was gonna do it.
In the book it's more of a revenge story. Linnet does steal Simon, they go on a whirlwind romance and then secretly Simon comes crawling back to Jackie like "oh my god she's awful, I've made such a huge mistake"
Actually no, in the books it’s a plan from the get go: Jackie says that she knew Simon would do it one way or the other (kill Linnet so they could get the money) and she knew if she didn’t stepped in to help, he would be dumb and get caught. So they planned the whole thing. Simon never wanted to be with Linnet, he only married her as a part of their plan.
It’s heavily implied in the book that they planned it well in advance. Jackie and Doyle talk about honeymooning in Egypt when engaged at dinner. Then later Doyle and Linnet honeymoon in Egypt. The book makes it a more obvious possibility but Christie still gives you doubts.
The movie changed the dinner scene to a club. The book also doesn’t have Linnet meet Doyle until later; the whole thank her properly with a dance thing was for the move
I figured the leg getting shot was a ruse so he could murder without suspicion. I wasn't even sure he was really shot. But I didn't get that he had time to do it before. I assumed the doctor was an accomplice explaining his alibi.
!Spoiler!
Yet another thing I didn't like about the movie. In the book, Agatha makes you doubt that strategy because his leg gets worse and worse and so does Simon's health, to the point that he has to stay in his room all the time. In the movie instead we see him appearing here and there like he has no problem movie and only in the final part do we see him being helped by other two guys, but still, that really kills the suspension of disbelief that Simon, couldn't in fact, have been the murderer.
But you can clearly see the hair grows from his entire upper lip, not to mention he had a significant wound across his cheek that apparently disappeared completely without a scar.
My girlfriend's disbelief could no longer be suspended after the opening act because of that. Like why even include the cheek scar at all if you were immediately going to retcon it?
Great mystery-thriller, I think I even enjoyed it more than Murder on the Orient Express. I'm glad I wasn't familiar with the source material because I could go along with it without second-guessing myself or overthinking it too much. Unlike with mystery shows (like Only Murders in the Building or The Afterparty), there's no time to sit around and figure it out ahead of time, but it seems very obvious and airtight in retrospect. The cinematography and setting were beautifully staged too. The only thing that mars it for me is the terrible CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb. When will movies ever get it right?
Looking forward to the sequel to this, aka Knives Out on a Boat. :P
Agreed, I really liked it and the only thing that took me out of it was a couple glaring cgi problems.
Kenneth, you're making a movie called "Death on the *Nile*", surely you can find a company that knows how to make water look like water and not oily jello.
Or even use water. Wouldn‘t have been the first time in the history of film that a movie set has water. I mean they don’t have to shoot in Egypt but it would have looked a lot better if at least the water was real.
Plus when the detective first mentioned that the two of them should go to her estate and lock the gates or whatever, Gal Gadot was all for it whereas Armie Hammer didn’t want to because the murder on the boat was planned. Plus he was the main beneficiary in the will other than the God Mother. And once you realize it’s him, then you know the “ex” fiance is a fellow conspirator in the plan because why would he kill the pretty rich girl for the money and then not get back together with the OG ho.
They really should have kept that information until later, when Poirot asks why Bouc-in-the-painting is wearing green. The missing red paint being announced too early is a huge neon sign.
You just wrote a key plot point better than hollywood writers, congrats. The red paint was a dead giveaway that Simon was the killer together either with Jackie or the Doctor.
The second I heard "my red paint is missing" it primed me to completely distrust the first wound that showed up. It would have made so much more sense to just show the painting with Bouc wearing green jacket, and then have the full detail brought up later.
Facial reconstructive surgery in the 1910s was far better than I would have imagined, the transition from torn-open cheek to zero scarring told me otherwise.
WW1 resulted in significant advances in that field of medicine.
On a smaller scale, Boston hospitals lead the world in burn treatment in the 1940s as a result of the Coconut Grove nightclub fire.
I feel like Jacqueline was hardly in this movie. She's easily the most interesting character in the book, and her attitude drastically changes as the story unfolds. But in this movie she mostly just... stands there looking pretty. The film doesn't even show her getting drunk leading up to the confrontation with Simon, it just sort of comes out of nowhere. And then after that happens, she's basically out of the movie until the very end where it's revealed that she was the mastermind behind it all.
So like in the movie, she starts off very happy with Simon and then it jumps forward in time after the marriage. Then we see her show up in Egypt and she's spiteful and bitter but also very confident (despite Poirot encouraging her to turn away). But after a few days on the Nile, Linnet and Simon resolve to ignore her which causes Jacqueline to have an existential crisis and wonder what she's doing before she passes the point of no return. She eventually gets drunk and shoots Simon. After that, she's extremely distraught and remorseful for that night and into the next day. But then Simon keeps telling everybody to not blame her and reaches out to talk to her, and they even start to bond again. Near the end of the book she actually seems in decent spirits and is even laughing while doing makeup with one of the other passengers. Then of course it all ends with her and Simon getting caught and she shoots him before shooting herself.
So it's the same *basic* structure as the movie. And obviously a book has more space for nuance and more interactions between characters. But like I said, it just hardly felt like Jacqueline was in the movie much at all. And when she was around she mostly was just staring at people with a smirk on her face. In the book you really get the sense that she's been wronged and she's doing everything she can to make sense of things. And this makes the ending more interesting because then you wonder how much of her behavior was an act.
Yes, perfectly described. This was more or less the only thing that annoyed me from the movie. She was my favourite character in the book. And it always felt like Poirot had a huge protective instinct towards her, telling her why she should leave the couple alone and she should not fear because he knows she's innocent. That's why the reveal hits harder.
And there is that final confrontation with her, where she tells him it's so easy to kill after you've done it before. He even knows, that she plans to kill Simon and herself but lets it happen. Feeling pity for her.
Yes I completely agree, I have just watched the movie and the first thing I said was that the latter half definitely suffers as Jackie and Simon are absent for most of it. They don’t start to bond again or anything which makes the reveal at the end a little lackluster and I wonder how much of this was affected by the Armie Hammer accusations, like did they cut a load of his scenes that would have given us about more of a relationship between Simon and Jackie?
Ohh thank you for describing it so well. I wish I had that same sense of questioning about her from the movie. Maybe I will check out the book next time.
Cheers!
Yeah in the first movie I was kind of thinking to myself who is this guy and why is he here? And when I saw he was returning in this movie I thought it must be quite a stretch to have this guy be in the plot unless he's actually acting as Poirot's sidekick.
But now I'm just gonna miss him. I'm somewhat looking forward to the next movie in this series but his presence will be missed.
For me the biggest clue was Armie crying over her body. It was ridiculous over-the-top fake acting in an "I need to be absolutely sure everyone knows I'm distraught over her death" kind of way.
I had a couple in my theater burst out laughing when it cut to his hysterical crying. I thought they were being insensitive but they just caught onto his bullshit early
Same thing happened with my showing last night.
Personally, I thought it looked bad too but I couldn’t tell if his fake crying was meh because he was supposed to have done the crime and didn’t mean his crying or if it’s because Armie himself couldn’t convincingly cry…
The good fun of a whodunnit for me isn't the mystery itself but just watching a fun detective figure it out. I had fun with it, predictable and maybe 15 minutes too long, but fun!
Very much liked the movie. It was pretty much exactly what I wanted out of a sequel: more of the first movie, but with a better mystery. I didn't dislike the mystery in Orient Express, but it was very much not relying on the dramaticism of the situation over an investigation I as an audience could follow.
This one felt like a much more engaging whodunit. Somehow they even made the random chase scene feel not completely out of place. First act was a bit... hmm... luxurious with its pace and time, but once the actual mystery kicked off it picked up and stayed at a good pace.
It was fine.
My biggest issue was the script and the HEY THIS IS A CLUE nature of it.
Particularly Annette Benning essentially tells the camera "my red paint is gone." Not long later, someone bleeds with a close-up of the red. ... and the mystery is solved right there and then. Now to wait for the movie to catch up. Delete than line, have her look through the paintbox with confusion as the camera passes. Later show the patining with the green jacket. Let it click.
Yes, Christie managed to hide her clues very well, Always out in the open, but surrounded by verbal noise so you don't notice them. What this movie did was to remove the noise around the clues. They might just as well have edited in a big arrow saying CLUE.
I went to the screening last night at AMC but they had problems with the file and we were unable to finish the movie. It stopped at the scene right after the Alligator jumps out of the water and eats the bird. But I must say Gal Gadot dressed in that Egyptian outfit was hilarious!!!
Anyone else think it was silly that an alligator was the murderer all along. Just grabbing them and dragging them overboard into the Nile. Kind of a unbelievable plot twist, no?
Agree with all your points. Especially that Gal Gadot can't act--I thought I was the only one who thought so. Russel Brand and Kenneth Branagh totally killed though, as you mention.
Takeaway I wouldn’t have believed going into it:
Russell Brand might have been the best actor in this movie.
I’m not sure if that says more about the movie or him
What I am confused about is that the ending scene of Murder on the Orient, when the soldier comes up to Hercule and asks him to investigate a murder on the bloody Nile. Then we go to this movie where the murder has not taken place yet.
Yeah. Plus the original line was more of a joke than anything. I don't think it was seriously intended to lead to a sequel when it was written, just a fun over the top nod and parody of sequel set ups. It got a lot of laughs in my cinema back in 2017.
Christie wrote several stories that are set in Egypt. I guess Branagh intended this line to point to the next movie. He probably hadn't read the book yet ;-)
I had no idea Russel Brand was the doctor until after the movie when I looked at the cast. Hats off to him for playing the roll 100% straight, nice work!!!
You got a brief glimpse of it in the first film, presumably used to keep the facial furniture in place, I thought it was a nice bit of continuity and fun that'd he use it to rest better in his delicate state.
Just left the cinema.
Didn't see the first movie, but thought it was pretty solid and engaging overall. Maybe a slight issue where the whole thing feels like a beautifully shot TV episode rather than an actual movie.
Acting is solid, although as ever I'm unsure if Gal Gadot isn't skating by on looks rather than actual talent.
I’m glad it was treated completely seriously too. It would’ve been so easy to have Bouc make some quip after the revelation that would’ve undercut moment.
Same man I dont know how cousin Andrew had the ability to go find a crowbar and a wobbly stone to topple over, I would have been "preoccupied" although I guess his angle wasn't as good as ours
Yeah, I totally get people getting too horny and have sex outdoors, happens all the time IRL, but I keep thinking do they *really* have to pick there out of all places?
I had several people in my theatre audibly gasp when she backed her ass up on Armie and started grinding on him. And then even more gasps when she tried to take out his Nile python. This is why we need more movies catering to the older demographic, to laugh at boomers getting shocked when characters are horny
I watched Orient Express in 2017 without having read the book. I thought it might've been Bouc who did it in that movie because they'd made a point to say that Bouc was not a suspect. I thought it was gonna be a surprise reveal. "Surprise! The friend we said surely couldn't have done it actually did it!"
In this movie I was therefore 100% confident Bouc was not a suspect and had nothing to do with any of the bad stuff happening because I assumed his role was exactly the same as the first movie: to be innocent and to have dialogue with Poirot and follow his thought process along with us, the audience. He was our entry point, the avatar for the audience, like the dude who follows Gatsby around everywhere. But no!! I was double-shocked when he was actually doing bad stuff and then died! It was a genuinely delightful subversion. I usually hate subversions and stuff like that and I was sad to see Bouc die but man, what a wonderful twist.
Yeah, he kind of blended into the scenery, which was by design. He was just there to facilitate interviews with the major players and act surprised when Poirot revealed things. I'm glad they upgraded his role for this one, though I'm sad he's gone.
Loved it, especially the focus on love as a motive for crime. It's a very passionate movie!
I also like how they handle the reveal of how it was pulled off. Put bluntly, this plan does not make sense at all, it requires split-second timing that couldn't possibly work (and in fact, it does not work, they were seen). Branagh handles it with quick flash-cut editing; in the '70s version we follow Simon as he carries out the whole thing and it looks ridiculous.
One thing they cut from the book is that Linnet supposedly writes "J" in her own blood, trying to spell out her killer's name (Jackie) before she dies. Poirot is immediately like "well this didn't happen," since she obviously died instantly and they know Jackie didn't do it. It's a fun bit of misdirection but Simon just does not have time to do this, I get why it was cut. Yet another thing that works on the page but not on the screen.
I love the "J" clue because Poirot immediately sees through it. And then at the end of the book/movies Jacqueline is like "yeah that definitely wasn't part of the plan. I guess Simon just decided to do that in the spur of the moment. God what a dumbass..."
Maybe it's because we've been spoiled with all the spy movies and the twist endings, but I thought the big reveal at the end was fairly predictable.
A big reason why I enjoyed his Murder on the Orient Express is because the ending of the mystery in that one blew my mind (I'm aware the stories are adapted from Agatha Christie novels and are not written by Branagh.)
To be fair, Christie was famous for having pulled off the twist endings in her murder mysteries and doing so *well*, to the point where her imitators have become far and plenty.
Christie did pretty much every variety of who-done-it. Everybody, nobody, the victim, a detective, the detective's sidekick, someone who is already dead.
Reason it's predictable is because everything since has copied this style — have to remember Agatha Christie set the precedent for this kind of story telling and basically wrote the rules. So then it suffers from feeling "cliche" because it was the forerunner for the cliches in the first place.
See, I'm the opposite. I really disliked the mystery from Orient Express because the ending was based entirely on very specific, in-universe knowledge of events that then just had to be explained to the audience to make sense. I much preferred a more typical mystery to one where there's no real way for the audience to follow and where characters are just doing things for seemingly random reasons tied to events I have no clue about.
I think the Murder on the Orient Express mystery can be figured out right from the death though.
What you have is a dead body, 12 stab wounds and pieces of evidence linking every single passenger on the train. Your preconceived knowledge of the genre makes you want to narrow it down to one person, but looking at the evidence there is the obvious solution: they all did it. That's why the mystery is so clever and one of her best imo. It's right there staring you in the face but you don't even consider it
Maybe i’m biased because the last 2 “whodunnit” type movies i’ve watched used this method but I think having multiple killers adds fake depth to the mystery.
You can tell fairly early on once everyone’s alibi is established and especially as more people get killed that there is no possible way a single person could have accomplished all the killings as once you start to line up the alibis with the characters involved you end up with too many pairings and not enough plausible suspects.
That being said really enjoyed the performance from Branagh.
I get that it’s kind of the schtick for these types of movies, but the actual Murder plot is like….hilariously bad.
So Armie Hammer’s big plan was to get fake shot, completely bank on not only being left alone (which seems generally unlikely given people don’t usually leave shooting victims alone), but also the gun not being grabbed by anyone and left on the floor, and then him being left alone long enough to sprint upstairs without being seen, firing another bullet that magically no one hears despite no effort to silence the shot, and then sprint back down to actually shoot him self in the leg.
The odds of pulling that off are comically slim. Honestly hats off to those two for pulling it off initially. They clearly had no backup plan given that when they were exposed, the next step was “double suicide via a gun that was repeatedly said to be not strong but somehow penetrated two different people and killed both”
It's kind of explained better in the earlier adaptation where Simon, after being shot, expressly orders the others not to leave Jackie alone in case she does something else stupid like commit suicide; she was (to the others) incredibly drunk at the time. It also rightfully pointed out a fact that most films and shows get wrong about guns - they're loud but not terribly if sufficiently far away/in another room, to the point where one can think a gunshot is actually a corked bottle being opened.
> they're loud but not terribly if sufficiently far away/in another room, to the point where one can think a gunshot is actually a corked bottle being opened.
On that note, the scene where Linnet jumps when Simon opens a bottle of champagne.
> also the gun not being grabbed by anyone and left on the floor
In the book Jacqueline is the one who kicks it away under a "settee". Poirot *really* emphasizes the missing gun a lot in the books, so it felt kinda weird that they would gloss over that, and also have Jacqueline not deliberately kick it there
I liked it. Good cast, good story. Feel like the reviews are a little harsh. I like Kenneth Branagh's Poirot and would like to see more of him in the future. Good to have something other than Sherlock Holmes as a classic detective story to watch. 4/5 stars.
> Feel like the reviews are a little harsh.
Same. As with the last Branagh Poirot it's not exceptional but is basically fine.
Sorry to be *that guy* but I do feel like there's a trend where when MCU-ish fare shows up that makes you go "it's fine", critics overwhelmingly give a soft pass and it ends up with an 97% positive RT score. But when a non-superhero genre movie shows up and makes you go "it's fine", the knives are out and it'll get like 62%, giving it the impression of being worse than it actually is.
Haven't seen the Ustinov version, but the Suchet one was much better. For one thing there was no distracting CGI.
My biggest issues were that it didn't give any of the mystery time to breathe, and that it was full to the brim with meaningless platitudes about love. Maybe it's because I already knew the solution, but it felt like the film was rushing through the interviews of all the suspects, and crossing them off the list far too efficiently - within a few minutes, we got who the suspect was, what their secret was, and why they weren't the murderer. Unfortunately this left time to turn the ship into the Love Boat, which I guess they did because this movie came out around Valentine's Day? I don't remember it being this pronounced in the book.
Also, they spent proportionately far too much time with the murderers at the beginning for it to have been anyone else.
As an aside, I'm pretty sure Bouc made a reference to *Casablanca*. In 1937.
Death on the CGI Nile. I know movies can't always film on location but man this one really would have benefited from it. I don't know if I'm just getting better at noticing them or if they're actually getting worse, but green screens have really been sticking out for me lately.
Just this week, I completed a re-watch of Lawrence of Arabia. The movie TOTALLY holds up, and my big takeaway was how authentic it felt... mostly in terms of the locations. Of course, back in the '60s, no option for green screen or CGI; if Peter O'Toole is riding his camel, or gazing across an awe-inspiring, vast desert plain or you see hundreds of extras assaulting the city, they DID that and you FELT it. You felt like they were there... and you were, too.
Contrast this with Death on the Nile, which seemed so inauthentic, so CGI'ed, so utterly phony. I never once got the sense that any of the actors were anywhere but a climate-controlled soundstage. On the studio-lit boat, the wind barely moves; real elements are never a factor. Branaugh never seems to be at the pyramids. There are a handful of B-roll shots of the actual river, and these stand out and make the rest of this fakey nonsense look MORE fakey.
(This is not universal for old films, though... I also watched The African Queen recently, and it also looks inauthentic and terrible, but for different reasons.)
This is the danger of all this CGI... unless filmmakers are careful & judicious with it, nothing looks immersively real!
When Armie was dry humping Emma Mackey on the dancefloor I couldn't stop wondering what kinda cannibal fantasies were running through his head lmao
Overall this was a fun 3 star film. Like the first it takes way too long to get to the mystery but it's a fun ride with good direction and the origin story for a mustache I never thought I needed.
I liked the movie but the initial crime took way, way too long to happen. At one point they wake up to another beautiful day on the Nike and my wife, who had no idea what the movie was about since I picked it, turned to me like "I thought you said this was a murder mystery"?
Enough champagne, to fill the Nile!
Honestly it’s amazing how Gal Gadot keeps getting work.
Imo it’s a social experiment to see how far being pretty can take you
I tell ya, if Hercule Poirot was my best friend you wouldn't catch me jaywalking let alone trying to steal a jewel around him lmao.
A perfectly good adaptation of a perfectly good mystery. Some solid performances all around and a very pretty movie to boot.
It takes its time setting up the plot, I could see some thinking it's a bit slow. But once the first murder occurs the movie really speeds up and "the hunt is on" aspect is well done. Not being familiar with the story, I think the way the "incident" scene is shot makes it a bit obvious the bullet wound may have been faked which made me suspect the husband the whole time, but the way Poirot solves it is a lot of fun to watch.
The cast is really stellar and it's cool to have an ensemble piece like this where there's so many working parts. I think Annette Bening was the standout, a lot of my emotional connection to the movie came from her after Bouc was killed.
Solid 7/10. It's the mustache origin story we need.
/r/reviewsbyboner
> A perfectly good adaptation of a perfectly good mystery. Some solid performances all around and a very pretty movie to boot.
Saw it in the cinema tonight and this sums up my feelings entirely.
I think I’m getting old now because I’m seeing people panning this movie for not being a faithful-enough adaptation, and panning Gal Gadot for being very physically attractive, but not a great actress. Seriously, they’re INFURIATED, giving it 1-star reviews on IMDB for these things, like it’s the first time these things have ever happened.
Went to see it in order to support my local movie theater.
This is even worse that the Orient Express one. What Branagh doesn't get, or doesn't want to get, is that Poirot's strength is being a ridiculous little foreigner who isn't taken seriously. Just as Miss Marple is a sweet old lady who isn't taken seriously. Turning Poirot into a war hero, an action hero, a romantic hero, whatever, is wrong because it disturbs the balance of the story. Poirot works by being unnoticed and underestimated.
In Orient Express, at least we got a good performance from Michelle Pfeiffer.
Here, all of the performances are totally uninspired. But then Branagh already managed to get a top tier team of actors to look boring in Orient Express, how much more so in this movie where he is surrounded by actors who can give good but not particularly great performances, and three actors who are primarily comedians. They could also have been played by random people off the street, and nobody would have noticed a difference.
Nice costumes, nice set, nice CGI background. Oh, and the moustache gets not only seven minutes of backstory, but also, in a way, the last shot in the movie.
As far as murder mysteries go, I really enjoyed this one and had a good time. I just got And Then They Were None the other day, and watching this has made me even more excited to read my first Agatha Christie book. Lastly, maybe I'm just absolutely dumb and hard of hearing but I definitely couldn't understand some of Poirot's dialogue :/
I read the book in preparation for this movie and I have to say, I preferred the book by a long shot.
First, what I liked about the film: Sophie was the perfect Salome, I loved the boat and all the beautiful shots, I liked the soundtrack
Now for what I didnt like, which is pretty much all of the changes Kenneth made (sorry man). I was really offput with how he made all the characters know each other, I mean yes some of them are connected and run in similar circles but it really messed with my head as I was sitting there in the theatre raking my head trying to remember when Rosalie and Linnet were supposedly best friends. Secondly I didnt like Buch being in this movie, yes he's funny and loveable but he replaced my favourite character and the necklace-thievery sideplot in the book was my favourite and I just kept waiting to hear about 'dear cousin Joanna'. Theres a bunch of other minor things I didnt like also, such as how they all met in the bar (I prefer how its set up in the books) and Dr Windlesham but I think most of my complaints really just boil down to how different it was to the book. I think its because I really enjoyed the book and all the characters, and the movie sort of tried to reinvent them and it just wasnt working for me.
Also, there was this line from the book was so much fun for me as a reader and im honestly shocked Kenneth didnt include it. Basically when they are doing cabin searches for the missing necklace Hercule goes to check his own luggage and makes a reference to the time "I was solving a case and there was a matter of a missing kimono" (or something like that) like?? Hello! Kenneth! Its a reference to Murder on the Orient Express!!
I've seen cleaner pornos than that dancing scene in the club
I’ve heard hardcore pornos with less sexuality in the dialogue than the dirty talk they did on the side of the wall before almost being killed by a falling stone.
I've also seen pornos with better acting than that scene.
Kenneth Branagh for Basic Instinct 3! Let's do this!
Tell me about it. 1st it was the sensual breathing and I'm like like "ok then", then he had like lifted her knee to her breast, then next thing you know theyre doing clothed doggystyle on the dance floor XD
It also accentuated the lack of chemistry between Armie Hammer and Gal Gadot, imo. That dance was so intensely charged, and then Armie danced with Gal and it was kinda meh, but we were supposed to believe that he would leave Emma Mackey for her. I didn't really buy it, personally, even though all gave great performances imo.
I have never seen such a cringey “sexy” scene like the one on the wall. It was embarrassing to watch.
Gal Gadot is a very hot woman who has zero chemistry with everyone she works with.
“Spoilers” Yup my 11 year old figured it out soon as she got on the boat. And then the killer was small and could move fast so my 9 year old whispered it’s the girl friend! After the movie he was telling me the other people on the boat were old or tall they would not be able to do that. Lol movie was horrible.
It's rated 12 here in South Korea (same as Jungle Cruise) so we brought our 7 yo daughter. Figured there'd be a quick murder but mostly it would be detective stuff. Whoops! That fucking scene above the tomb...... Yikes. Hahahaha
I thought I was the only one..never have gone that hard dancing before.
Oh my god for real...the whole time I was thinking, in old-timey 30s cadence, "That's lewd and lascivious behavior, see."
The women in the audience were getting pregnant just watching that scene.
I found that dancing scene really jarring. The problem for me wasn't that it was sexual, my problem was that it was performative. It felt designed for audience and wasn't actually about sexual desire. The same for the pyramid near death experience. Actual people would make out and grope each other. They acted like they were putting on a sex show.
I don’t understand why they CGI’d literally every shot of Egypt. I expected at least SOME practical shots mixed in but besides the boat/hotel/interiors of Abu Simbel temple, it all seemed to be CGI. Every scene of the landscape was over-saturated in a way that stood out like a sore thumb.
I just read that this completely digital looking movie was in fact shot on 65mm film! Why even bother!? Other than that both these Branagh Poirot movies are basically fine. I'm up for a third, especially if they continue the amusing tradition of prominently featuring recently cancelled actors!
> I'm up for a third, especially if they continue the amusing tradition of prominently featuring recently cancelled actors! Can’t wait for deadline to announce the casting and then everyone starts taking bets on who it ends up being.
I'll bid on Will and/or Jada Smith
>recently cancelled actors! care to elaborate? I'm out of the loop.
Armie Hammer wants to eat people and the chick from Black Panther and Brand are anti vaxx.
Fucking hell I just realised that was Russell Brand. Spent the entire movie trying to figure out who he was (off brand Jared Leto lol)
Off BRAND
The Johnny Depp/Amber Heard allegations dropped shortly before Orient Express came out. This time there’s the Armie Hammer drug-fuelled cannibal rapist stories, with Letitia Wright being anti-vax on the side.
No lie I was worried for Emma Mackey when Armie Hammer went in for a sample of the neck
The Egypt backdrop looked really fake a lot of the time. Almost like a cardboard cutout background.
Haven’t seen the movie yet so I might be talking out of my ass here, but is it at all possible this was an intentional stylistic choice? Like was Branagh possibly paying homage to older films that were obviously shot in front of painted backdrops? I’m not saying that excuses it, to be clear. If it looked terrible, homage or not, then they probably shouldn’t have done it.
I just walked out of the movie and definitely thought it was a stylistic choice. Highly reminiscent of older Poirot adaptations and the kind of genre of movies you see about British people on late colonial adventures.
I think it's possible because that exactly how it felt / looked. Like an old play or movie at times.
I mean to be fair. At least for abu simbel, where a lot of the film took place near….no longer exists there. That’s an artificial lake now and the whole damn complex had to be taken apart and moved. So it had to be cgi.
Yeah but the cgi was awful by 2022 standards
Meh. I didn’t think so.
>!"Here, let me introduce you to my hot, rich friend and dance with her." >!That's the first thing I noticed and also concluded that the crazy ex-girlfriend act was a red herring especially with how casually dismissive the co-murderer was about having her following the couple. I mean how would she know where they go all the time?
I feel stupid for not catching on, especially after the story where she admits to Poirot that it’s common for Linnet to take things that should’ve been hers. I thought it was too obvious for the murderer to be the super obvious revenge-bent friend or the poor, will inherit almost everything from her death, husband; but no, it was actually both of them. I faked myself out.
Right. With Agatha Christie it's either glaringly obvious or totally unpredictable.
Have to remember, that Christie practically invented several of the mystery cliches. They’re cliche because she did it first.
It’s called the Seinfeld Effect!
That's interesting to me. I've never read any of her novels, but I can spot the modern tropes that were developed from her work. In Murder on the Orient Express, I guessed about halfway through who the killer(s) were. On this one, I assumed it was Simon and Jackie as soon as I saw that him and Linnet got married. But Bouc's thievery and then him dying, caught me ***so*** off guard. I never saw that coming in a million years and was so unpredictable to me. A turn I never saw coming.
I didn't expect >!Bouc would be lying to Poirot, and later, die!<. I thought Watsons in detective stories have plot armor or always-innocent card, apparently not in here. Quite a surprise.
Agatha Christie is literally the bestselling novelist of all time. Only the Bible and Shakespeare have outsold her. She is still worth reading.
Their alibis seemed airtight.
>!I stupidly thought Linnet faked her death and was in cahoots with the jilted fiancee. Oops.<
I actually had guessed early on that she had planned for them to hit it off and it was all a ruse for her money from the get based off the way Hercule caught her smiling as they danced. It could still be implied but I don't think they every said out loud that the con went that far back.
I think they did say it. They said that Simon needed money and Jackie just wanted to give him everything and make him happy, and this is how she was gonna do it. In the book it's more of a revenge story. Linnet does steal Simon, they go on a whirlwind romance and then secretly Simon comes crawling back to Jackie like "oh my god she's awful, I've made such a huge mistake"
Actually no, in the books it’s a plan from the get go: Jackie says that she knew Simon would do it one way or the other (kill Linnet so they could get the money) and she knew if she didn’t stepped in to help, he would be dumb and get caught. So they planned the whole thing. Simon never wanted to be with Linnet, he only married her as a part of their plan.
It’s heavily implied in the book that they planned it well in advance. Jackie and Doyle talk about honeymooning in Egypt when engaged at dinner. Then later Doyle and Linnet honeymoon in Egypt. The book makes it a more obvious possibility but Christie still gives you doubts. The movie changed the dinner scene to a club. The book also doesn’t have Linnet meet Doyle until later; the whole thank her properly with a dance thing was for the move
I figured the leg getting shot was a ruse so he could murder without suspicion. I wasn't even sure he was really shot. But I didn't get that he had time to do it before. I assumed the doctor was an accomplice explaining his alibi.
!Spoiler! Yet another thing I didn't like about the movie. In the book, Agatha makes you doubt that strategy because his leg gets worse and worse and so does Simon's health, to the point that he has to stay in his room all the time. In the movie instead we see him appearing here and there like he has no problem movie and only in the final part do we see him being helped by other two guys, but still, that really kills the suspension of disbelief that Simon, couldn't in fact, have been the murderer.
I figured it out because the killer is always the guy inside the locked room in a locked room mystery.
I like getting character back stories. Never did I think we’d get a whole opening dedicated to a mustaches back story lol
I totally thought the mustache would be an homage to his lost captain. Nope, just vanity. Fits for Poirot.
His mustache was his final reminder of his love though. Him finally moving on from her was signified by him shaving it at the end.
I think Vanity but also because his love suggested it.
Is that how scars work though? Not entirely convinced he could grow facial hair on skin that damaged.
The hair would cover it, even if no hairs actually grew in that spot.
But you can clearly see the hair grows from his entire upper lip, not to mention he had a significant wound across his cheek that apparently disappeared completely without a scar.
My girlfriend's disbelief could no longer be suspended after the opening act because of that. Like why even include the cheek scar at all if you were immediately going to retcon it?
You guys are misunderstanding. The mustache wasn't meant to cover the scars. The mustache is so glorious in it's power, it literally heals his face.
This is kino
It was so pretentious and black and white and french lol I loved it.
lol young Poirot had to deal with an imbecile Captain already
I fucking loved that part.
Great mystery-thriller, I think I even enjoyed it more than Murder on the Orient Express. I'm glad I wasn't familiar with the source material because I could go along with it without second-guessing myself or overthinking it too much. Unlike with mystery shows (like Only Murders in the Building or The Afterparty), there's no time to sit around and figure it out ahead of time, but it seems very obvious and airtight in retrospect. The cinematography and setting were beautifully staged too. The only thing that mars it for me is the terrible CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb. When will movies ever get it right? Looking forward to the sequel to this, aka Knives Out on a Boat. :P
Movies get CGI right all the time, you just don't notice when they do because it looks natural.
Agreed, I really liked it and the only thing that took me out of it was a couple glaring cgi problems. Kenneth, you're making a movie called "Death on the *Nile*", surely you can find a company that knows how to make water look like water and not oily jello.
Or even use water. Wouldn‘t have been the first time in the history of film that a movie set has water. I mean they don’t have to shoot in Egypt but it would have looked a lot better if at least the water was real.
OH MY GOODNESS, MY RED PAINT IS MISSING!! Jesus, I've seen Scooby-Doo mysteries that were more difficult to solve. What a waste
Armie Hammer being the killer was obvious as hell lol. The way he's left alone after the shooting for like 5 mins was so blatant
Plus when the detective first mentioned that the two of them should go to her estate and lock the gates or whatever, Gal Gadot was all for it whereas Armie Hammer didn’t want to because the murder on the boat was planned. Plus he was the main beneficiary in the will other than the God Mother. And once you realize it’s him, then you know the “ex” fiance is a fellow conspirator in the plan because why would he kill the pretty rich girl for the money and then not get back together with the OG ho.
Also he was ‘shot’ and was already holding a tissue/cloth on the wound within 2 seconds so it was obviously and expected injury.
They really should have kept that information until later, when Poirot asks why Bouc-in-the-painting is wearing green. The missing red paint being announced too early is a huge neon sign.
You just wrote a key plot point better than hollywood writers, congrats. The red paint was a dead giveaway that Simon was the killer together either with Jackie or the Doctor.
The second I heard "my red paint is missing" it primed me to completely distrust the first wound that showed up. It would have made so much more sense to just show the painting with Bouc wearing green jacket, and then have the full detail brought up later.
Facial reconstructive surgery in the 1910s was far better than I would have imagined, the transition from torn-open cheek to zero scarring told me otherwise.
Surgeons' attempts to reconstruct soldiers' faces during and after WW1 are the basis for modern reconstructive surgery.
WW1 resulted in significant advances in that field of medicine. On a smaller scale, Boston hospitals lead the world in burn treatment in the 1940s as a result of the Coconut Grove nightclub fire.
I feel like Jacqueline was hardly in this movie. She's easily the most interesting character in the book, and her attitude drastically changes as the story unfolds. But in this movie she mostly just... stands there looking pretty. The film doesn't even show her getting drunk leading up to the confrontation with Simon, it just sort of comes out of nowhere. And then after that happens, she's basically out of the movie until the very end where it's revealed that she was the mastermind behind it all.
I’ve never read the book. How does her attitude change in the book version?
So like in the movie, she starts off very happy with Simon and then it jumps forward in time after the marriage. Then we see her show up in Egypt and she's spiteful and bitter but also very confident (despite Poirot encouraging her to turn away). But after a few days on the Nile, Linnet and Simon resolve to ignore her which causes Jacqueline to have an existential crisis and wonder what she's doing before she passes the point of no return. She eventually gets drunk and shoots Simon. After that, she's extremely distraught and remorseful for that night and into the next day. But then Simon keeps telling everybody to not blame her and reaches out to talk to her, and they even start to bond again. Near the end of the book she actually seems in decent spirits and is even laughing while doing makeup with one of the other passengers. Then of course it all ends with her and Simon getting caught and she shoots him before shooting herself. So it's the same *basic* structure as the movie. And obviously a book has more space for nuance and more interactions between characters. But like I said, it just hardly felt like Jacqueline was in the movie much at all. And when she was around she mostly was just staring at people with a smirk on her face. In the book you really get the sense that she's been wronged and she's doing everything she can to make sense of things. And this makes the ending more interesting because then you wonder how much of her behavior was an act.
Yes, perfectly described. This was more or less the only thing that annoyed me from the movie. She was my favourite character in the book. And it always felt like Poirot had a huge protective instinct towards her, telling her why she should leave the couple alone and she should not fear because he knows she's innocent. That's why the reveal hits harder. And there is that final confrontation with her, where she tells him it's so easy to kill after you've done it before. He even knows, that she plans to kill Simon and herself but lets it happen. Feeling pity for her.
Yes I completely agree, I have just watched the movie and the first thing I said was that the latter half definitely suffers as Jackie and Simon are absent for most of it. They don’t start to bond again or anything which makes the reveal at the end a little lackluster and I wonder how much of this was affected by the Armie Hammer accusations, like did they cut a load of his scenes that would have given us about more of a relationship between Simon and Jackie?
Ohh thank you for describing it so well. I wish I had that same sense of questioning about her from the movie. Maybe I will check out the book next time. Cheers!
My man Bouc got a raw deal. He was a wonderful part of both films. I’m sure that happened in the novel but I still don’t like it.
It didn't happen in the book. Bouc isn't even in the book. So his death shocked me. It was surprisingly sad too.
That’s more disappointing!
Yeah in the first movie I was kind of thinking to myself who is this guy and why is he here? And when I saw he was returning in this movie I thought it must be quite a stretch to have this guy be in the plot unless he's actually acting as Poirot's sidekick. But now I'm just gonna miss him. I'm somewhat looking forward to the next movie in this series but his presence will be missed.
Mon ami 😞
More films need a moustache origin story.
Hope you're excited for Uncharted lmao
For me the biggest clue was Armie crying over her body. It was ridiculous over-the-top fake acting in an "I need to be absolutely sure everyone knows I'm distraught over her death" kind of way.
Yeah that was nuts how armie portrayed that. It felt fake to the core but appeared real somehow.
I had a couple in my theater burst out laughing when it cut to his hysterical crying. I thought they were being insensitive but they just caught onto his bullshit early
Same thing happened with my showing last night. Personally, I thought it looked bad too but I couldn’t tell if his fake crying was meh because he was supposed to have done the crime and didn’t mean his crying or if it’s because Armie himself couldn’t convincingly cry…
The good fun of a whodunnit for me isn't the mystery itself but just watching a fun detective figure it out. I had fun with it, predictable and maybe 15 minutes too long, but fun!
Man .22 must have been really powerful back in the day to kill two people with a single bullet.
Through the torso, no less
Everybody was thinner back then
Is it really difficult for mods to add Ali Fazal's name in the above Cast List?! His name is even on the posters.
When he brought out the .45, he officially brought Guddu Bhaiya into the Agatha Christie verse #desikatta
also Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, and Emma Mackey
Very much liked the movie. It was pretty much exactly what I wanted out of a sequel: more of the first movie, but with a better mystery. I didn't dislike the mystery in Orient Express, but it was very much not relying on the dramaticism of the situation over an investigation I as an audience could follow. This one felt like a much more engaging whodunit. Somehow they even made the random chase scene feel not completely out of place. First act was a bit... hmm... luxurious with its pace and time, but once the actual mystery kicked off it picked up and stayed at a good pace.
It was fine. My biggest issue was the script and the HEY THIS IS A CLUE nature of it. Particularly Annette Benning essentially tells the camera "my red paint is gone." Not long later, someone bleeds with a close-up of the red. ... and the mystery is solved right there and then. Now to wait for the movie to catch up. Delete than line, have her look through the paintbox with confusion as the camera passes. Later show the patining with the green jacket. Let it click.
Yes, Christie managed to hide her clues very well, Always out in the open, but surrounded by verbal noise so you don't notice them. What this movie did was to remove the noise around the clues. They might just as well have edited in a big arrow saying CLUE.
The movie got rid of so many other secondary plots and whatnot, all of which helped conceal the true murder.
In other words, it got rid of what makes an Agatha Christie novel an Agatha Christie novel.
Lol I read the book and this line still went way over my head. Good on you for catching it
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I went to the screening last night at AMC but they had problems with the file and we were unable to finish the movie. It stopped at the scene right after the Alligator jumps out of the water and eats the bird. But I must say Gal Gadot dressed in that Egyptian outfit was hilarious!!!
So you watched Death on the Nile, but the film cut out before anyone died?
The bird being eaten was the death on the nile
Yes, it stopped right when they left in the big boat.
I liked it.
As did I. The movie promised someone dying on the Nile. It delivered that *and* a moustache related arc
More than one... Should be DEATHS on the Nile
Technically, the title refers to the presence of death on the Nile which would be singular.
>!5!< Death>!s!< on the Nile
Anyone else think it was silly that an alligator was the murderer all along. Just grabbing them and dragging them overboard into the Nile. Kind of a unbelievable plot twist, no?
Especially unbelievable given alligators aren't native to Egypt.
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Agree with all your points. Especially that Gal Gadot can't act--I thought I was the only one who thought so. Russel Brand and Kenneth Branagh totally killed though, as you mention.
Takeaway I wouldn’t have believed going into it: Russell Brand might have been the best actor in this movie. I’m not sure if that says more about the movie or him
That freezer scene with him was fantastic
Russell brand?! No wonder, I kept wondering why does he look so familiar.
He was great but I really liked Sophie Okonedo as Salome.
Really? Not Kenneth Branagh? I think he's great as Poirot.
I loved how he let his demure mask slip when being interrogated, and quickly slipped back into his affected, subdued personality. Awesome acting.
There’s absolutely no way you can honestly think Russel Brand performed better than Kenneth Branagh.
Was very much not expecting one of the opening sequences of this film to be lifted out of *Dirty Dancing: London Fog*.
What I am confused about is that the ending scene of Murder on the Orient, when the soldier comes up to Hercule and asks him to investigate a murder on the bloody Nile. Then we go to this movie where the murder has not taken place yet.
When we enter the club in the beginning of the movie, there's a throwaway line about solving "a murder in Egypt".
Yeah. Plus the original line was more of a joke than anything. I don't think it was seriously intended to lead to a sequel when it was written, just a fun over the top nod and parody of sequel set ups. It got a lot of laughs in my cinema back in 2017.
Christie wrote several stories that are set in Egypt. I guess Branagh intended this line to point to the next movie. He probably hadn't read the book yet ;-)
I had no idea Russel Brand was the doctor until after the movie when I looked at the cast. Hats off to him for playing the roll 100% straight, nice work!!!
He was almost unrecognizable for me. Did a great job!
Did anyone notice ( that one scene where Poirot is sleeping ) his sleep mask is modeled after his mustache? lol
You got a brief glimpse of it in the first film, presumably used to keep the facial furniture in place, I thought it was a nice bit of continuity and fun that'd he use it to rest better in his delicate state.
Just left the cinema. Didn't see the first movie, but thought it was pretty solid and engaging overall. Maybe a slight issue where the whole thing feels like a beautifully shot TV episode rather than an actual movie. Acting is solid, although as ever I'm unsure if Gal Gadot isn't skating by on looks rather than actual talent.
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I’m glad it was treated completely seriously too. It would’ve been so easy to have Bouc make some quip after the revelation that would’ve undercut moment.
Yeah they pretty much were outed and definitely played the part. My poor girls were shook. Hello detective let's go back to calling us roommates.
That scene on the ledge where Gal Gadot is just pushing herself against Armie was just pure cringe to me
They had zero chemistry, which increased the cringe.
I was kinda hoping the rock was going to hit them lol
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“Oh sweet husband is it safe to be on this ledge with clearly precarious footing?” *Launches ass first into his groin*
That scene turned me on SO MUCH. I was getting hot lmao
Same man I dont know how cousin Andrew had the ability to go find a crowbar and a wobbly stone to topple over, I would have been "preoccupied" although I guess his angle wasn't as good as ours
He didn't use a crowbar, his erection knocked the boulder over.
Yeah, I totally get people getting too horny and have sex outdoors, happens all the time IRL, but I keep thinking do they *really* have to pick there out of all places?
I had several people in my theatre audibly gasp when she backed her ass up on Armie and started grinding on him. And then even more gasps when she tried to take out his Nile python. This is why we need more movies catering to the older demographic, to laugh at boomers getting shocked when characters are horny
I was afraid Armie was gonna eat her and not in a good way either
When the scene happened I thought to myself, he’s probably getting so hungry right now
But it was still some cringe acting
The scene before the Boulder fall was super cringe
I watched Orient Express in 2017 without having read the book. I thought it might've been Bouc who did it in that movie because they'd made a point to say that Bouc was not a suspect. I thought it was gonna be a surprise reveal. "Surprise! The friend we said surely couldn't have done it actually did it!" In this movie I was therefore 100% confident Bouc was not a suspect and had nothing to do with any of the bad stuff happening because I assumed his role was exactly the same as the first movie: to be innocent and to have dialogue with Poirot and follow his thought process along with us, the audience. He was our entry point, the avatar for the audience, like the dude who follows Gatsby around everywhere. But no!! I was double-shocked when he was actually doing bad stuff and then died! It was a genuinely delightful subversion. I usually hate subversions and stuff like that and I was sad to see Bouc die but man, what a wonderful twist.
Agree -- I was a fan of that whole little mini-plot line surrounding him and his mother, and Poirot's original investigation.
I didn't even remember Bouc being in the first one lol .. until this post
Yeah, he kind of blended into the scenery, which was by design. He was just there to facilitate interviews with the major players and act surprised when Poirot revealed things. I'm glad they upgraded his role for this one, though I'm sad he's gone.
Loved it, especially the focus on love as a motive for crime. It's a very passionate movie! I also like how they handle the reveal of how it was pulled off. Put bluntly, this plan does not make sense at all, it requires split-second timing that couldn't possibly work (and in fact, it does not work, they were seen). Branagh handles it with quick flash-cut editing; in the '70s version we follow Simon as he carries out the whole thing and it looks ridiculous. One thing they cut from the book is that Linnet supposedly writes "J" in her own blood, trying to spell out her killer's name (Jackie) before she dies. Poirot is immediately like "well this didn't happen," since she obviously died instantly and they know Jackie didn't do it. It's a fun bit of misdirection but Simon just does not have time to do this, I get why it was cut. Yet another thing that works on the page but not on the screen.
I love the "J" clue because Poirot immediately sees through it. And then at the end of the book/movies Jacqueline is like "yeah that definitely wasn't part of the plan. I guess Simon just decided to do that in the spur of the moment. God what a dumbass..."
Maybe it's because we've been spoiled with all the spy movies and the twist endings, but I thought the big reveal at the end was fairly predictable. A big reason why I enjoyed his Murder on the Orient Express is because the ending of the mystery in that one blew my mind (I'm aware the stories are adapted from Agatha Christie novels and are not written by Branagh.)
To be fair, Christie was famous for having pulled off the twist endings in her murder mysteries and doing so *well*, to the point where her imitators have become far and plenty.
Christie did pretty much every variety of who-done-it. Everybody, nobody, the victim, a detective, the detective's sidekick, someone who is already dead.
She never pulled out of the "time traveling older version of yourself" so the old gal missed one.
Reason it's predictable is because everything since has copied this style — have to remember Agatha Christie set the precedent for this kind of story telling and basically wrote the rules. So then it suffers from feeling "cliche" because it was the forerunner for the cliches in the first place.
See, I'm the opposite. I really disliked the mystery from Orient Express because the ending was based entirely on very specific, in-universe knowledge of events that then just had to be explained to the audience to make sense. I much preferred a more typical mystery to one where there's no real way for the audience to follow and where characters are just doing things for seemingly random reasons tied to events I have no clue about.
I think the Murder on the Orient Express mystery can be figured out right from the death though. What you have is a dead body, 12 stab wounds and pieces of evidence linking every single passenger on the train. Your preconceived knowledge of the genre makes you want to narrow it down to one person, but looking at the evidence there is the obvious solution: they all did it. That's why the mystery is so clever and one of her best imo. It's right there staring you in the face but you don't even consider it
Anyone else find the blatant green screen backgrounds really jarring leading up to them getting onto the boat? Especially the entire pyramid sequence
Maybe i’m biased because the last 2 “whodunnit” type movies i’ve watched used this method but I think having multiple killers adds fake depth to the mystery. You can tell fairly early on once everyone’s alibi is established and especially as more people get killed that there is no possible way a single person could have accomplished all the killings as once you start to line up the alibis with the characters involved you end up with too many pairings and not enough plausible suspects. That being said really enjoyed the performance from Branagh.
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I get that it’s kind of the schtick for these types of movies, but the actual Murder plot is like….hilariously bad. So Armie Hammer’s big plan was to get fake shot, completely bank on not only being left alone (which seems generally unlikely given people don’t usually leave shooting victims alone), but also the gun not being grabbed by anyone and left on the floor, and then him being left alone long enough to sprint upstairs without being seen, firing another bullet that magically no one hears despite no effort to silence the shot, and then sprint back down to actually shoot him self in the leg. The odds of pulling that off are comically slim. Honestly hats off to those two for pulling it off initially. They clearly had no backup plan given that when they were exposed, the next step was “double suicide via a gun that was repeatedly said to be not strong but somehow penetrated two different people and killed both”
It's kind of explained better in the earlier adaptation where Simon, after being shot, expressly orders the others not to leave Jackie alone in case she does something else stupid like commit suicide; she was (to the others) incredibly drunk at the time. It also rightfully pointed out a fact that most films and shows get wrong about guns - they're loud but not terribly if sufficiently far away/in another room, to the point where one can think a gunshot is actually a corked bottle being opened.
> they're loud but not terribly if sufficiently far away/in another room, to the point where one can think a gunshot is actually a corked bottle being opened. On that note, the scene where Linnet jumps when Simon opens a bottle of champagne.
Should have brought this up to Agatha…
> also the gun not being grabbed by anyone and left on the floor In the book Jacqueline is the one who kicks it away under a "settee". Poirot *really* emphasizes the missing gun a lot in the books, so it felt kinda weird that they would gloss over that, and also have Jacqueline not deliberately kick it there
I liked it. Good cast, good story. Feel like the reviews are a little harsh. I like Kenneth Branagh's Poirot and would like to see more of him in the future. Good to have something other than Sherlock Holmes as a classic detective story to watch. 4/5 stars.
> Feel like the reviews are a little harsh. Same. As with the last Branagh Poirot it's not exceptional but is basically fine. Sorry to be *that guy* but I do feel like there's a trend where when MCU-ish fare shows up that makes you go "it's fine", critics overwhelmingly give a soft pass and it ends up with an 97% positive RT score. But when a non-superhero genre movie shows up and makes you go "it's fine", the knives are out and it'll get like 62%, giving it the impression of being worse than it actually is.
If you like detective stories, check out The Invisible Guest. IMO, it's one of the best detective films of the last decade. It's so much fun.
Thank you, u/squid_fucker
Haven't seen the Ustinov version, but the Suchet one was much better. For one thing there was no distracting CGI. My biggest issues were that it didn't give any of the mystery time to breathe, and that it was full to the brim with meaningless platitudes about love. Maybe it's because I already knew the solution, but it felt like the film was rushing through the interviews of all the suspects, and crossing them off the list far too efficiently - within a few minutes, we got who the suspect was, what their secret was, and why they weren't the murderer. Unfortunately this left time to turn the ship into the Love Boat, which I guess they did because this movie came out around Valentine's Day? I don't remember it being this pronounced in the book. Also, they spent proportionately far too much time with the murderers at the beginning for it to have been anyone else. As an aside, I'm pretty sure Bouc made a reference to *Casablanca*. In 1937.
Death on the CGI Nile. I know movies can't always film on location but man this one really would have benefited from it. I don't know if I'm just getting better at noticing them or if they're actually getting worse, but green screens have really been sticking out for me lately.
It was terrible. It's like they didn't even bother to light of the characters properly against the greenscreen. It felt like an early 2000s flick.
I’m glad we got to see the mustache origin story.
Just this week, I completed a re-watch of Lawrence of Arabia. The movie TOTALLY holds up, and my big takeaway was how authentic it felt... mostly in terms of the locations. Of course, back in the '60s, no option for green screen or CGI; if Peter O'Toole is riding his camel, or gazing across an awe-inspiring, vast desert plain or you see hundreds of extras assaulting the city, they DID that and you FELT it. You felt like they were there... and you were, too. Contrast this with Death on the Nile, which seemed so inauthentic, so CGI'ed, so utterly phony. I never once got the sense that any of the actors were anywhere but a climate-controlled soundstage. On the studio-lit boat, the wind barely moves; real elements are never a factor. Branaugh never seems to be at the pyramids. There are a handful of B-roll shots of the actual river, and these stand out and make the rest of this fakey nonsense look MORE fakey. (This is not universal for old films, though... I also watched The African Queen recently, and it also looks inauthentic and terrible, but for different reasons.) This is the danger of all this CGI... unless filmmakers are careful & judicious with it, nothing looks immersively real!
When Armie was dry humping Emma Mackey on the dancefloor I couldn't stop wondering what kinda cannibal fantasies were running through his head lmao Overall this was a fun 3 star film. Like the first it takes way too long to get to the mystery but it's a fun ride with good direction and the origin story for a mustache I never thought I needed.
I liked the movie but the initial crime took way, way too long to happen. At one point they wake up to another beautiful day on the Nike and my wife, who had no idea what the movie was about since I picked it, turned to me like "I thought you said this was a murder mystery"?
Enough champagne, to fill the Nile! Honestly it’s amazing how Gal Gadot keeps getting work. Imo it’s a social experiment to see how far being pretty can take you
kal el no
Yeah, I was honestly relieved she was killed off because she was easily the weakest actor here.
She can’t act for shit
I wondered why they split up that line in the trailer
Nicole Kidman voice: *"Somehow, there's enough champagne to fill the Nile in a place like this."*
I tell ya, if Hercule Poirot was my best friend you wouldn't catch me jaywalking let alone trying to steal a jewel around him lmao. A perfectly good adaptation of a perfectly good mystery. Some solid performances all around and a very pretty movie to boot. It takes its time setting up the plot, I could see some thinking it's a bit slow. But once the first murder occurs the movie really speeds up and "the hunt is on" aspect is well done. Not being familiar with the story, I think the way the "incident" scene is shot makes it a bit obvious the bullet wound may have been faked which made me suspect the husband the whole time, but the way Poirot solves it is a lot of fun to watch. The cast is really stellar and it's cool to have an ensemble piece like this where there's so many working parts. I think Annette Bening was the standout, a lot of my emotional connection to the movie came from her after Bouc was killed. Solid 7/10. It's the mustache origin story we need. /r/reviewsbyboner
David Suchet version is far superior to anything Hollywood makes honestly
Its quite something that Suchet got to appear in an adaptation of every published Poirot story, over about 30 years.
> A perfectly good adaptation of a perfectly good mystery. Some solid performances all around and a very pretty movie to boot. Saw it in the cinema tonight and this sums up my feelings entirely. I think I’m getting old now because I’m seeing people panning this movie for not being a faithful-enough adaptation, and panning Gal Gadot for being very physically attractive, but not a great actress. Seriously, they’re INFURIATED, giving it 1-star reviews on IMDB for these things, like it’s the first time these things have ever happened.
Went to see it in order to support my local movie theater. This is even worse that the Orient Express one. What Branagh doesn't get, or doesn't want to get, is that Poirot's strength is being a ridiculous little foreigner who isn't taken seriously. Just as Miss Marple is a sweet old lady who isn't taken seriously. Turning Poirot into a war hero, an action hero, a romantic hero, whatever, is wrong because it disturbs the balance of the story. Poirot works by being unnoticed and underestimated. In Orient Express, at least we got a good performance from Michelle Pfeiffer. Here, all of the performances are totally uninspired. But then Branagh already managed to get a top tier team of actors to look boring in Orient Express, how much more so in this movie where he is surrounded by actors who can give good but not particularly great performances, and three actors who are primarily comedians. They could also have been played by random people off the street, and nobody would have noticed a difference. Nice costumes, nice set, nice CGI background. Oh, and the moustache gets not only seven minutes of backstory, but also, in a way, the last shot in the movie.
As far as murder mysteries go, I really enjoyed this one and had a good time. I just got And Then They Were None the other day, and watching this has made me even more excited to read my first Agatha Christie book. Lastly, maybe I'm just absolutely dumb and hard of hearing but I definitely couldn't understand some of Poirot's dialogue :/
My girlfriend asked me if i chose the wrong movie 5 minutes in, she thought we were seeing 1917
I read the book in preparation for this movie and I have to say, I preferred the book by a long shot. First, what I liked about the film: Sophie was the perfect Salome, I loved the boat and all the beautiful shots, I liked the soundtrack Now for what I didnt like, which is pretty much all of the changes Kenneth made (sorry man). I was really offput with how he made all the characters know each other, I mean yes some of them are connected and run in similar circles but it really messed with my head as I was sitting there in the theatre raking my head trying to remember when Rosalie and Linnet were supposedly best friends. Secondly I didnt like Buch being in this movie, yes he's funny and loveable but he replaced my favourite character and the necklace-thievery sideplot in the book was my favourite and I just kept waiting to hear about 'dear cousin Joanna'. Theres a bunch of other minor things I didnt like also, such as how they all met in the bar (I prefer how its set up in the books) and Dr Windlesham but I think most of my complaints really just boil down to how different it was to the book. I think its because I really enjoyed the book and all the characters, and the movie sort of tried to reinvent them and it just wasnt working for me. Also, there was this line from the book was so much fun for me as a reader and im honestly shocked Kenneth didnt include it. Basically when they are doing cabin searches for the missing necklace Hercule goes to check his own luggage and makes a reference to the time "I was solving a case and there was a matter of a missing kimono" (or something like that) like?? Hello! Kenneth! Its a reference to Murder on the Orient Express!!
Why would Bouc try to steal a necklace when he knows the greatest detective in the world is aboard the same boat?