DEATH ON THE NILE : Tuesday 8th February 2022.

I saw the Australian Premier screening of the PG Rated 'DEATH ON THE NILE' at the Open Air Cinema at Mrs. Macquarie's Point in Sydney earlier this week. This mystery thriller is Directed, Co-Produced and stars Kenneth Branagh and is based on the 1937 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie, is the follow up to Branagh's 2017 film 'Murder on the Orient Express', and is the third screen adaptation of the novel after the 1978 feature film and an episode on the TV series 'Agatha Christie's Poirot' aired in 2004. The film was originally set to be released on 20th December 2019, before being rescheduled to 9th October 2020. It was then pushed back two weeks to 23rd October and again to 18th December in response to the domestic box office during the COVID-19 pandemic. In November 2020, the film was removed from its upcoming release schedule until further notice. The next month, the film was rescheduled to 17th September 2021 and in March 2021, it was then moved to this week. Costing US$90M to produce, the film has so far generated mixed or average Reviews. 

The film opens up with black and white footage of the trenches during WWI where French and Belgian troops have just taken orders to advance on the German line in three hours time when the wind changes direction in their favour, so supposedly allowing them to make the advance undercover of a canopy of gas. The commanding officer of the French and Belgian company (sporting an impressive moustache) gives his final orders to his men saying that many of them will surely die. Then turning around is a young soldier, Poirot (a clean shaven and de-aged Kenneth Branagh) who says that the birds circling overhead change the direction of their flight when the wind changes and that he has been observing them for months, and if they are to succeed in breaching the German line they must go within the next seven or eight minutes. And so they go, and undercover of a canopy of gas they surprise and storm the German line with minimal casualties on their side, their mission a great success against all odds. Until that commanding officer steps on a trip wire which triggers a huge explosion killing him instantly and sending many of his company straight to the nearest field hospital. Sometime later a nurse Katherine (Susannah Fielding) walks up to Poirot's bedside. His head is turned away from her and as she speaks there is clearly a connection between the two. Poirot then turns his head to face her revealing deep shrapnel scars to his lower left face, upper lip and chin, and he says how can you love a man who looks like this? She cradles his hands in hers, kisses his hand, and says, 'you'll just have to grow a moustache'. 

We then fast forward to London, 1937, and as Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh now sporting a full moustache) enters a music club we are greeted by Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo) a jazz singer and guitarist who is belting out a tune on stage with her band, with her niece and business manager Rosalie Otterbourne (Letitia Wright) handling her fee for the evening's entertainment. On the dance floor going all in are Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) and his bride to be Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey). Arriving at the door amongst a flash of photographers cameras and making a grand entrance is very wealthy business woman Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot), who is a long term school friend of Jacqueline's. Jacqueline can hardly contain herself as she tells Linnet of her new found love, and then introduces her to Simon, saying that they should dance. And they do, and there is clearly a chemistry between them, that Jacqueline can see instantly. All the while Poirot is observing this. 

Six weeks later we find ourselves in a lavish hotel on the banks of the River Nile in Egypt to celebrate the wedding of Simon Doyle . . . . . and Linnet Ridgeway. Among the invited guests are Bouc (Tom Bateman) and his renowned painter mother Euphemia (Annette Bening), Linus Windlesham (Russell Brand) an aristocratic doctor and former fiance to Linnet, Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders) Linnet's Godmother and communist convert who has given all her money away, Mrs. Bowers (Dawn French) Marie's nurse, companion and former wealthy business woman who has fallen upon very hard times, Louise Bourget (Rose Leslie) Linnet's maid, and Andrew Katchadourian (Ali Fazal) Linnet's cousin and lawyer. And of course Poirot who was coincidentally holidaying nearby and in a chance meeting with his old friend Bouc at the pyramids, is invited along to join in the celebrations. And who else should rock up just to add insult to injury, but Jacquleine. Also in the gathered line up of guests is Salome and Rosalie, as the latter is an old classmate of Linnet's.

And so after some heated discussions between Simon and Linnet about whether they should abandon their honeymoon because of the unwanted presence of Jacqueline, and Poirot intervening to have a discreet word with Jacqueline too, they all agree that the show must go on. And so Simon arranges, at his wife's expense, to hire out the paddle steamer, the S.S. Karnak, exclusively for their honeymoon and their invited guests to enjoy a leisurely cruise down the Nile taking in the sights, drinking Champagne, enjoying each others company and generally having a good ol' time. The first afternoon and evening go reasonably well as the happy couple and gathered guests all settle in and we get to know them all. 

The S.S. Karnak cruises up to the Temple of Abu Simbel and all passengers alight to view the temple of King Ramesses II and his wife Nefertari from both the outside and within. While the passengers are on shore, Jacqueline boards the Karnak and surprises Simon and Linnet (and not in a good way) upon their return, with her presence.  

Later that evening Simon and Linnet reveal to Poirot that they have made the decision to return home the next day (as was Poirot's earlier suggestion) to get away from Jacqueline and to get on with the lives peacefully, quietly and in private. However, tomorrow never comes, as later that night after most of the guests, including Linnet, have retired for the night, Jacqueline shoots Simon in the knee with a .22 hand gun, after the pair got into a fierce argument. Poirot is busy sleeping through all this commotion - the effects of being on a moving boat and a glass of Champagne knocking him out. Linus Windlesham attends to Simon, while Mrs. Bower attends to Jacqueline and sedates her. The next morning Louise Bourget is delivering breakfast to Linnet, only to find her stone cold dead in her bed with a single bullet wound to the temple. Poirot is woken by the screaming of Louise and goes off to investigate.

What follows over the next 24 hours or so is Poirot's murder investigation into the death of Linnet. Everyone is a suspect and everyone had a motive it seems. Poirot methodically interviews each of the guests in turn and either rules them out or keeps them on his list of prime suspects. In the meantime it is revealed that Bouc and Rosalie are in love, much to his mothers chagrin and disapproval. But it turns out that Poirot was hired by Euphemia to get the full low down on Rosalie and to establish her character and suitability to be the wife of her son. Poirot comes clean in front of Euphemia, Bouc, Rosalie and Salome that his findings of Rosalie are that she is honest, forthright, responsible and trustworthy and should be considered a keeper, but still Euphemia will have none of it, and Rosalie is so angered by Poirot that she calls him all the names under the sun. She storms off and Poirot gives chase. Catching up on the deck, Rosalie notices a body caught up in the paddle of the steamer. Stopping the boat, and retrieving the corpse it is revealed to be that of Louise, who had her throat slit before being thrown overboard, using a very sharp blade - like a surgeon's scalpel, like those belonging to Windlesham. 

With the body count rising, Poirot continues with his interviews, coming down to the final one, that of Bouc, which he conducts in the presence of Simon. Poirot and Bouc go back a long way and are trusted friends, but Poirot has his suspicions about Bouc. In their discussions, just as Bouc is about to reveal a potentially important piece of evidence, he is shot by a single bullet through the throat from behind and up high. He dies instantly where he sat. Poirot gives chase to the unknown assailant and manages to dodge several gun shots aimed directly at him, but is unable to catch the shooter. 

Later that evening with the remaining guests becoming increasingly agitated that Poirot has as yet drawn a blank and with a seemingly ever increasing body count, Poirot locks them all inside the bar saying that that murderer is in the room and he will now reveal who the murderer, or murderers, are. And in a shocking twist, he does, and nails it, leaving five corpses to be stretchered off the boat at the end!

In the closing scene, we fast forward six weeks, and we are back in London at the music club where Poirot first saw Salome play. She is singing, but there are no guests dancing, there is no party atmosphere, and in fact the host passes by Poirot, who is facing away from the camera looking toward the stage, saying that the place is about to close. Poirot turns around revealing his clean shaven face, with the old scars to his upper lip, his chin and his lower left face clearly evident. 

For me 'Death on the Nile' was a bit of a let down. It's certainly lacks the air of mystery and suspense that Branagh's 'Murder on the Orient Express' delivered, despite Branagh's return as the super sleuth detective extraordinaire Hercule Poirot and his once again assembling of an all star cast, however, this film is a notch above the 1978 film in which Peter Ustinov portrayed Poirot, but without much sense of the location in which the story is set. Branagh is clearly having a lot of fun playing Poirot for the second time around, and giving us a glimpse of his own backstory and how his famous moustache came to be. Who knows where he'll take the character if a third film ever gets made. As for the rest of the ensemble crew they are all mostly one dimensional cardboard cut outs most of whom have the motive for seeing off Linnet, but who tread water while flailing around in the Nile like their lives depended on it. The film certainly looks the part, with the Director not scrimping on the production design, CGI wizardry or the sense of place that it offers up, but this film is a film of two distinct halves. The first set on dry land where we are introduced, albeit briefly, to the main characters, and the second on the Nile, leading up to the murders, the hurried suspect interviews and then the rush to the finish line in explaining his suspicions and the ultimate big reveal, which offers up a real surprise. As a final comment I would like to know what happened between 'Murder on the Orient Express' and this film, as Poirot's closing remarks at the end of Orient Express as he is called to his next case he says 'it seems there has been a death on the Nile', yet in between time he has ventured to London, taken on a case for Euphemia and holidayed in Egypt? Continuity be damned!

'Death on the Nile' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

COLD PURSUIT : Tuesday 12th February 2019

'COLD PURSUIT' which I saw this week is an American action thriller Directed by Norwegian film maker Hans Petter Moland whose previous Directorial credits include 'Zero Kelvin', 'Aberdeen', 'The Beautiful Country' and 2014's 'In Order of Disappearance' - which marked his fourth film with Stellan Skarsgard. And so in 2019 for an English speaking audience, we have a sort of remake of 'In Order of Disappearance', his own film from five years ago and based on the script penned by Danish Writer, Illustrator and Screenwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson. The film was released in the US and Australia last week, and in the UK on the 22nd of this month, has received generally positive press, and has recouped US$20M of its US$60M production budget so far.

And so to the plot. Here Nelson 'Nels' Coxman's (Liam Neeson) quiet life as a snowplough driver in his Canadian Rocky Mountains remote resort hometown of Kehoe is bittersweet. First up, as the film opens we see him getting dressed up in collar & tie, shirt & cufflinks aided by his wife Grace (Laura Dern), to attend a ceremony to be awarded Kehoe's 'Citizen of the Year'.

Then a few days later comes the tragic news that his beloved son Kyle (Michael Richardson) has died under mysterious circumstances, which the autopsy soon reveals was a heroin overdose. But Nels states that his son was no druggie, so how can that possibly be. After the funeral, Grace becomes distant from Nels upon discovering things about their son they never knew - that he had a social media account, the music he liked to listen to, his favourite films and so on, which makes them wonder how well they really did known their son. Ultimately, in her grief, Grace leaves Nels.

A few days later, Nels is in his snowplough shed, contemplating suicide. He puts a loaded rifle in his mouth poised to pull the trigger when he is interrupted by a young man, badly beaten up and who had taken shelter in the shed from the harsh snow conditions. It turns out that this young man worked with Kyle at the airport as a baggage handler, and got caught on the wrong side of a local drug cartel resulting in his death by lethal heroin injection. Nels coerces the young man to give him a name of who did this to his son - Speedo (Michael Eklund) he mutters out of a bloodied mouth. The next night Nels drives to nearby Denver to track down Speedo and does so to a local nightclub. There Nels confronts Speedo, who comes off considerably worse in the car park where Nels turns vigilante and gets the next name from the criminal before strangling him dead.

That name is Limbo (Bradley Stryker) who works in a boutique wedding outfitters. This time armed with a sawn off shotgun concealed under this jacket, Nels saunters into the shop under the guise of wanting a new Tux with which to wear when he renews his wedding vows with his wife. Limbo is suspicious and pulls a gun only to be beaten to it by Nels, who beats him to the ground with the butt of his shotgun. Wanting another name, Limbo by now has several teeth missing and can hardly speak but blurts out a name before being shot and killed point blank . . . . . that name is Santa.

Santa (Michael Adamthwaite) some time later drives through thick deep snow heading toward Kehoe, followed menacingly close behind by Nels driving his snowplough. Nels takes a right turn and disappears out of sight much to Santa's relief, only to emerge some minutes later ahead of Santa's vehicle and now blocking his way. Nels siddles up to Santa's car and orders him to back up so that he can pass, but instead Santa offers him a couple of hundred dollar bills to move his snowplough, Of course this only serves to annoy the hell out of Nels who through the side window smashes Santa's head against the steering wheel and then pulls him out onto the blade of his snowplough and proceeds to beat the crap out of him with his bare fists, ultimately using his shotgun to dispense with the perpetrator. Nels then slices open ten one kilo bags of cocaine and lets each one blow away in the wind and onto the driven snow.

Meanwhile whilst Nels has been preoccupied with some random killings all linked it seems to his sons death, Trevor 'Viking' Calcote (Tom Bateman) - a local drug lord based out of Denver, has grown very suspicious over the sudden and as yet unexplained disappearance of three of his henchmen. Viking has a young son Ryan (Nicholas Holmes) who attends private school, and whom he shares custody with this estranged wife Aya (Julia Jones) who argue and bicker every time they see each other mostly over visiting rights and the manner in which her soon to be ex-husband chooses to raise their son. Viking lives in a very modern sprawling house, seemingly with a small army of his henchmen who are at his beck and call, and who came through the ranks of the family 'business' when it was ruled over by Viking's revered father.

Viking has suspicions that the unconfirmed deaths of his drug dealing and smuggling goons are the work of a Native American drug cartel controlled by White Bull (Tom Jackson), with whom he has earlier avoided conflict due to a deal initiated by Viking's late father many years ago, and which both sides have steadfastly upheld since . . . . . until now! In retaliation, Viking captures White Bull's only son, interrogates him by beating him near to death and then puts a bullet between his eyes. This sparks a gang war between the two factions which is further sparked when White Bull's dead son is strung up on a mileage signpost on the outskirts of town to be discovered by a local young female detective Kimberly Dash (Emmy Rossum) and her ageing partner Gip (John Doman).

With this going on in the background, Nels visits his brother Brock 'Wingman' Coxman (William Forsythe), a former hitman for Viking's father, seeking advice on Viking and how he should best proceed given that he had already dispensed with three of the drug lords men. Brock suggests hiring a hitman which he does at some cost demanding two thirds up front and the balance when the job is done. But 'Eskimo' (Arnold Pinnock), the hired gun, double crosses Nels and goes to Viking with the news that he is his mark and wants to strike a deal. Viking listens intently and is then angered by his moral standards at double crossing his client, and so kills the hitman.

Viking eventually learns that Coxman has killed his men, and tries in vain to call off the gang war which he mistakenly started while not realising that White Bull intends to wreak his revenge through a blood debt - 'blood for blood, a son for a son'. Viking in the interim has mistakenly identified Brock Coxman, instead of Nels Coxman, as the killer of his three henchmen and so goes in search of him, locating him in his mountain side home and taking him for a ride in his Tesla from which he'll never return.  

Meanwhile, Nels kidnaps Viking's son from his prep school in an attempt to draw the drug lord into an ambush. Unknown to Nels, two of White Bull's men were also waiting at the school ready to kidnap Ryan, and seeing Nels walk off with the young lad give chase. Nels manages to evade them and drives the boy to his home. Viking learns that his son has been kidnapped and becomes increasingly agitated by the lack of contact from the kidnapper. Nels decides to let Viking stew until the morning. He also learns from an orderly at the school who witnessed Nels drive off with Ryan and as such was able to identify him, and now sat in front of Viking wants some reward for the information. Viking happily takes the mans intelligence, and then has his henchmen kill him.

Now realising that there is another Coxman, Viking's gang arrive the next day at the snowplough shed ready to dispense with Nels and retrieve his son. Nels plans for the ambush go awry and is unsuccessful, and he is captured alive. White Bull's gang in the meantime arrive shortly thereafter having tailed Viking's convoy with the intention of vengeance.

During the ensuing shootout, most of the gangsters on both sides are killed. Viking's getaway attempt is thwarted when his car is crushed by a rapidly shorn tree trunk dropped on his car from a height, courtesy of a quick thinking Nels, and is then shot in the chest by White Bull. Viking later dies shortly after being found amongst the carnage by the Kehoe Police Detectives Dash and Gip. As Coxman leaves the property in his snowplough to go back to work, White Bull jumps into the cab and the two men drive away together.

In quite enjoyed 'Cold Pursuit' and here you can expect to see Liam Neeson doing absolutely what he does best, a la 'Taken', 'A Walk Among The Tombstones', 'The Commuter', 'The Grey', 'Unknown', 'Run All Night' and 'Non Stop' et al. But Director Hans Petter Moland has crafted a film that combines just the right amount of wit and dead pan gallows humour with a sure footed story of revenge, drug barons, mistaken identity, a hero on the edge, a villain unhinged and a high body count all combined with the backdrop of the snow swept Rockies. It's a fun ride that has some clear underlying messages about racism, minority groups, greed, drugs, money, violence and relationships but because the body count rises so steeply there is barley time to get invested in the characters before they've exited stage left. Nonetheless, certainly worth a look, and Neeson and Moland don't disappoint. Didn't someone once say 'revenge is a dish best served cold' - how true!

'Cold Pursuit' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-