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Death on the Nile Movie Review

Death on the Nile is a 1978 mystery film directed by John Guillermin and starring Peter Ustinov, Angela Lansbury, Mia Farrow and Maggie Smith among many others. It’s a very good adaptation.

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“You perfectly foul French upstart!

Belgian upstart, please, Madame“

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This was the first big movie adaptation of this classic Agatha Christie novel and it was an excellent one despite its obvious flaws. Let’s first state those negatives. While the movie being over two hours and having basically flashbacks and an origin story to a degree was interesting at first, it became taxing a bit too much later down the line.

An original novel was just so much fun, but this movie felt too long and slow in pace to make that much of an impact in terms of its entertainment values. The directing by Guillermin is also quite poor as the movie lacks clearly defined direction, pace and structure. A better director would have made a more polished and tighter movie.

With that being said, everything else here I really liked and some aspects I genuinely adored. The all-star cast that they employed here was just incredible to witness. Each and every one of these actors and actresses delivered in spades in what is one impressively acted 70s spectacle of a movie.

Peter Ustinov is obviously not David Suchet. I did not quite buy him as Poirot, though the actor did a great job in terms of his acting performance and accent, but the mannerisms simply weren’t believable. Lois Chiles was beautiful and thus well cast as Linnet while Mia Farrow was reliably outstanding as the story’s best and most tragic character.

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Simon MacCorkindale was surprisingly strong as Simon. I did not know of this actor before this movie, but he was a pleasant surprise here. David Niven as Colonel Race was also stupendously cast and the dynamic between the two men was terrific. But the highlights were the older women.

Maggie Smith and Bette Davis were just perfect in their respective roles and their bickering was just so much fun to watch. And the standout is Angela Lansbury as Salome Otterbourne. She elevated this rather annoying character form the book to much greater heights with her wild, over-the-top performance that indicated that she was genuinely having an amazing time playing it. I always love seeing actors enjoy their work this much.

Death on the Nile the movie does one thing actually better than the novel and that is the usage of its setting. Yes, unlike the book that was very limited in that area, the film is impressively cinematic, adventurous and even a spectacle in certain scenes as it focused wonderfully on Egyptian architecture and various iconic locations. The scenes at the pyramids were so beautiful to watch.

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The film is, thus, technically brilliant and very much an acting and filming spectacle of its day, but more could have been done with the murders themselves and the mystery elements, both much better done in the original source material. Still, the dialogue is reliably strong and the story is surprisingly faithful, which I really appreciated. Those additions that were present were mostly fine with the cobra scene being particularly interesting and memorable.