Cindy DiGioia

I'm a big Agatha Christie fan from way back. There have been a number of good movie adaptations including the most recent Murder on the Orient Express. This one, Death on the Nile, sadly cannot be counted among them. I was very disappointed. The beginning of the movie was not necessary and had no bearing on the rest of the movie. It was a distraction and left us confused - at one point, we thought perhaps we had the wrong movie! The movie never seemed to really 'take off' - just a little hop toward the end. Too little development of the main characters, plotline, and Hercule Poirot himself. He is not a silly detective and yet in this movie at times, he comes across that way. I'm still confused why the long oversexed dance sequence was necessary and how that played into this storyline. It didn't. The lingering shots and camera angles didn't help and were annoying. This movie contained bits and pieces of a great story tossed into a hat then spilled all over - some sticking, some falling by the wayside, and some lost completely. What a mess. At least I knew the storyline, but my fellow viewers did not and felt lost from the start. Then, of course, the quite obvious 'hints' dropped here and there like a ton of bricks. A friend that watched with me who had not read the book, nor knew the story, told me at the beginning of the movie who the murderer was - they said, because it was so darn obvious. They were right. We had all so looked forward to this movie. What a dismal disappointment. I'm inviting this group over and renting the 1978 version of Death on the Nile, so they can see that a good movie can be made of this book.