Death On The Nile

Death on the Nile is a long and complicated book, and this does the book justice in my opinion, despite one or two misjudgements. I have seen all 6 of the Ustinov movies, and will say that the weakest is Appointment with Death. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, and the music score was just perfect. The script was excellent, and if you haven’t read the book, you wouldn’t have guessed the final solution in a million years. Peter Ustinov clearly enjoys himself as Hercule Poirot, sure he mayn’t look like the Poirot in the book, but his performance more than compensates. People say that this film is too long and drags. At nearly 3 hours, I think the film needed to be long to capture the essence of the book, though I do agree that it drags in the middle. The supporting actors were in general very good, especially the delicious overplaying by Angela Lansbury and Maggie Smith. I also liked Mia Farrow as Jaqueline and Simon McCorkindale as Simon. Bette Davis was very good as Mrs Van Schuyler, David Niven was excellent in an otherwise thankless role, Olivia Hussey was lovely though underused and George Kennedy was good but has been better. In fact, the only actress I wasn’t too keen on was Lois Chiles as Linnette. Linnette in the book is blond and bitchy, but Lois Chiles looked as though she had mousy hair and she didn’t quite have the bitchiness of the character right. That said, this is a beautiful looking film, that is fairly faithful to the book. All in all, 8/10. Bethany Cox.