The cruise would serve as a venue to celebrate her marriage to Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer). While in Egypt, the world-famous sleuth is invited by the heiress Linnet Ridgeway Doyle (played by Gal Gadot) to go on a luxury cruise on the Nile. “The killer is with us in this room!” is the standard thing to say in these murder mysteries.Īs he did with his version of Murder on the Orient Express, Branagh directs and again plays Poirot. Many of the passengers, it turns out, have a motive. In Death on the Nile, it’s a river cruise boat that plies the River Nile. Their reason for doing this, I guess, is to cater to today’s audiences.Īs with most Agatha Christie stories, a murder takes place in a confined venue. Both Green and director Branagh have tinkered with the surefire Christie formula. He also does away with certain details of the plot that make the story so compelling. His version of the Christie novel takes chronology for granted. This anachronism is just among the many lapses in the script penned by Michael Green. The script of Casablanca had yet to be completed even as filming was already underway, in 1942. The problem is the story of Death on the Nile is set in 1937. (“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”) That’s a clever quote, one of several immortal quips made by Humphrey Bogart in the classic movie Casablanca.

The friend tells him, “Of all the pyramids in all the towns in all the world, you walk into mine!”

Early in Kenneth Branagh’s new version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, our hero, the great Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, runs into a dear friend of his in the pyramids in Egypt.

Death on the nile by agatha christie