Linnet Ridgeway is hosting a honeymoon to die for.
Sure, she can afford it. Linnet Ridgeway—oh, forgive me, I mean Linnet Ridgeway-Doyle—is outrageously wealthy. She doesn’t find spare change in her couches as much as spare rubies and diamonds and perhaps a stray Faberge egg. A trip to Egypt for her handsome new hubby, Simon, and all of their friends? No sweat.
But there’s a problem: Linnet’s being stalked by an ex-friend of hers—and Simon’s ex fiancée.
Jacqueline De Bellefort had put up with a lot from her pal, Linnet. She was one of the few people who didn’t resent the heiress for her ridiculous beauty or her cadre of investments or her overflowing bank accounts. They were friends—or so it seemed. But when Jacqueline found a gem of her own—the dashing-if-poor Simon Doyle—Linnet just couldn’t keep her paws off the guy. Six weeks after Jacqueline introduced Linnet to Simon, Linnet and Simon were married. And they didn’t even invite her to the wedding.
But that hasn’t stopped Jacqueline from crashing the party all the same. She’s followed them all the way to Egypt—showing up at every cocktail party, every dance, every posh meal. Even when Linnet rented a whole ship (called the Karnak) to cruise the Nile, Jacqueline weaseled her way aboard. It’s enough to drive even the prettiest, savviest, richest of heiresses a little crazy.
But Jacqueline’s not the only guest with a stateroom full of Linnet-centric baggage. Linnet’s own former fiancé, Linus Windlesham, is on the cruise, too—and he’s none too happy about the happy couple. Linnet’s do-it-all maidservant, Louise, covets one of Linnet’s fabulous necklaces. Cousin/lawyer Andrew may covet her businesses.
Meanwhile, Marie Van Schuyler doesn’t covet anything—or, at least, that’s what she says. The socialite-turned-communist gave away her own fortune to support the movement. But why is Marie now just fine with participating in this extravagant, extended wedding party? Might she find all Linnet’s wealth a little much? Perhaps murderously so?
Why, there are more secret enemies of Linnet aboard this boat than types of champagne. She could really use a friend. But she’ll settle for Hercule Poirot, only the most famous detective in all the world. If anyone can keep her safe, he can.
Yes, this honeymoon is to die for. But is it worth … killing for?
Poirot is a justice-minded fellow. And when he’s on the track of a killer, nothing and no one will keep him from identifying the culprit. So when a murder is committed aboard this little floating boat of horror, he goes to work pretty much on a pro bono basis.
Poirot could’ve easily sat this one out if he’d so wished and let the authorities do the job. But that’s not his style. We also learn (via flashback) that Poirot saved a great many men in World War I, thanks to a bit of quick thinking.
The fact that Poirot is the “hero” of this little venture is, perhaps, not terribly surprising. But we do uncover another at least semi-heroic figure: Dr. Linus Windlesham. A British lord by birth, Windlesham wanted to do something more than just count his inheritance. So he became a doctor, and we learn that he spends much of his time in poor countries, giving medical care to those who don’t have a red cent to pay for it.
Poirot tries to encourage a despondent passenger by saying that she needs to move on with her life. It might not be the life she dreamed of, but it “may be the one God intended.”
While we don’t see a great deal of religiosity amongst Linnet or her other guests, the party is often surrounded by monumental buildings that the ancient Egyptians built to worship their own gods (or tombs to help them find the afterlife). We hear a reference to Moses.
Mystery writer Agatha Christie (and author of Death on the Nile) was not one for adding a lot of sex to her books. This movie—based on one of Christie’s most famous books, of course—has no such modesty.
Jacqueline and Simon perform a lewd dance at a jazz club pre-breakup. It’s so suggestive that Miley Cyrus could probably get a few pointers from it. When Linnet shows up, Jacqueline tells her that she and Simon, despite being unmarried, have sex “a lot.”
Once Linnet and Simon marry, the couple flirts frequently. And Linnet is not above goading Jacqueline by telling her how often she has sex with Jacqueline’s former fiancé. Linnet and Simon have a suggestive rendezvous in an Egyptian ruin, where double entendres are shared and carnally suggestive movements are made.
Other couples steal secret moments together during the trip. A heterosexual couple plots their future together, even though the man’s mother (also aboard) doesn’t approve. We’re told she never liked anyone her son dated unless she was sure it was just going to be a one-night stand. A same-sex couple is even more secretive (no surprise, given the movie’s 1930s timeframe), but we do see the pair holding hands at one point.
Women wear fashionable, somewhat revealing eveningwear. In flashbacks, we see that Poirot once was involved in a relationship himself. And in the present, he seems to have a crush on one of the passengers. A woman admits to having a handful of husbands, “each one a handful.”
We hear some really cynical thoughts about love and marriage from one of the guests. And when another passenger tells her that not every love ends with dissolution and betrayal, she says, “No, the lucky ones die in childbirth.”
As you might’ve gathered from the title of the film, we do witness a bit of death on the Nile. And murder—at least murder in Agatha Christie mysteries—tends to be contagious.
One victim is shot in the head: While we do see the wound, it’s not particularly bloody. Someone else expires from a slash to the throat (which leaves telltale blood spatter across a wall of the ship) and another is shot through the neck. Gunfire leads to the death of two others, as well. One corpse is found caught on the Karnak’s paddlewheel. The camera spies other bodies in bed or the boat’s makeshift morgue (surrounded by slabs of beef).
A flashback takes us back to World War I, where a company of Belgians makes a desperate assault on the German front. Many worry it’s a suicide mission, but some quick thinking by a much-younger Poirot allows the attack to succeed without loss of life. (It involves some poison gas, by the way, but it looks like either gas masks or rapid escapes keep fatalities from the noxious fumes low.) An explosion kills at least one person and seriously disfigures at least one other, and we see the man’s mangled face.
Someone is shot in the leg. A fracas breaks out among a couple of the ship’s guests. Guns are pointed at people and fired up in the air. We hear a reference or two to suicide.
We hear a handful of mild profanity, including “a–,” “d–n” and “h—“. God’s name is misused four times, once with the word “d–n.”
Linnet brags that there’s enough champagne aboard the Karnak to “fill the Nile.” People take advantage of all that bubbly … though not always to their own advantage. At least one person seems to get pretty inebriated, and pretty much everyone is seen drinking champagne or other alcoholic beverages during the course of the film.
A number of drugs are also used. One passenger takes sleeping pills. Another is given a sedative—enough, we’re told, to fell an elephant.
Murder isn’t the only crime committed aboard the Karnak. People steal quite a few objects, too—sometimes to cover up another crime, but sometimes because they just wanted ’em. One character seems to be guilty of cooking a few books. Naturally, lies and deception are all part of the Nile-esque stew.
We hear about how some of the Karnak’s passengers have been subjected to racial prejudice and how some aboard once perpetuated it.
Agatha Christie is considered one of the bestselling writers in history. If you tabulate sales of her 66 novels and 14 short-story collections, the British writer has moved around 2 billion copies—putting her collective works right behind the sales of the Bible and William Shakespeare (another British writer of some note, I’m told). Death on the Nile, originally published in 1937, is one of her best-known books, thanks in part to its star-studded film adaptations. (The first rolled out in 1978 and featured such luminaries as Bette Davis, David Niven, Maggie Smith and Peter Ustinov as the Belgian sleuth.)
But as beloved as Christie may be, her works can come with problems beyond the obligatory murders. She brought a handful of prejudices to her works and wrote in the dying days of British colonialism, and people of different races or ethnicities could be treated rather shabbily in her books. In Nile, for instance, she describes the Egyptian merchants of Assuan as a “human cluster of flies.”
Kenneth Branagh’s 2022 adaptation wipes away most of those discomforting stereotypes. For instance, a character named Salome Otterbourne morphs from a tippling white romance novelist in Christie’s original novel to a savvy, Black blues singer in the film—and one whom Poirot finds himself drawn to at that.
But while those changes may gratify, the movie also embraces other social changes that are less desirable.
When Jacqueline and Simon dance in a posh music club early on, it’s almost an act of simulated sex as it is a turn on the dance floor: Jacqueline even seems to twerk—a dance move that won’t be popularized for another 75 years or so. Linnet and Simon have their own suggestive encounter. And while it happens under the umbrella of marriage, it’s still discomfiting to those who might’ve been expecting a more traditionally British parlor-room mystery.
And then, of course, you’ve got the murders themselves.
When you read a novel from one of those great mystery novelists from the early 20th century—Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers—murder can feel strangely innocent. It’s merely the plot-point on which the clever whodunit turns. But thrown up on screen here, there’s no doubt that murder is a bloody business indeed: brutal, messy and freighted with terrible consequences.
Death on the Nile sticks a little more to the Christie vibe than did Branagh’s earlier adaptation, Murder on the Orient Express, where Poirot was presented as something slightly closer to an action hero than a purely cerebral sleuth. And this film itself offers plenty of style. You can feel its gilded decadence slide through the screen, just as it might’ve in Hollywood’s 1930s-’40s Golden Age.
But while the logic of Poirot is meticulous and exact, the movie itself strays more than it needs. If Poirot is concentrating on those little gray cells of his, the movie’s focus can sometimes slip a little lower.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
