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Death on the Nile Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 27 Reviews)

Good,but not the best
Peter Ustinov's Poirot,while entertaining,cannot hold a candle to the portrayal by David Suchet..The same might be said with respect to the two versions of this film.Lavish and star-studded,with academy award winners aplenty(david Niven,Bette Davis,George Kennedy to name a few)this version re-arranges the original Christie story somewhat,goes for humour rather than drama,and leaves out quite a bit that is important...For example;WHY do the two lovers want to kill the heiress anyway?In the Ustinov version there are no answers..The Mia Farrow charecter brings her boyfriend to rich girlfriend Lynette Ridgeway,the latter seems to seduce him and marry him and the Mia Farrow charecter SEEMS to react in a jealous rage,UNTIL,at the end it is dicovered that the two had planned the whole thing from the start with an eye towards killing the heiress...Still,the WHY is elusive...Not so in the superior David Suchet version(not star-studded at all,unless one counts TV actor David Soul in the role played here by George Kennedy),where the WHY is a lynchpin to the telling of the whole tale..
The movie stars in this version act,while the actors in the David Suchet version BECOME the charecters...There IS a difference,you know...
Sure,this gaudy epic glitters,but so does the David Suchet version,the difference being that in this version the glitter is mainly flash ,with little substance...Still,if one likes watching a bunch of movie stars this is the version to buy...but if one wants a faithful version of the story,a version one can sink one's teeth into,then skip this film and buy the version that stars David Suchet,THE definitive Hercule Poirot !

best hercule poirot
if you only have time for one ustinov poirot movie this is the one, great story, amazing scenery, a cast including david niven, angela lansbury, mia farrow, bette davis, among a stellar group ..really good.

Death on the Nile
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS must have impressed me, because I bought this the next day and watched it that evening. It's great. Agatha Christie wrote novels with the intention of writing novels, but as luck would have it they translate into films quite well. Exotic scenery. A peek at how rich folks live. An all-star cast in fun roles that are meant to be a bit over the top, so that we think everybody is the killer. And everybody has the means, motive and opportunity to be the killer. But who is it?

In this particular film, I solved it somewhere between the time that Poirot solved it and the time that he explained it, which is about a ten-minute window. Agatha Christie wrote some damn tough puzzles with a very sneaky wit because she was having fun, same as her readers, or in the case of this film the actors and audience.

This is Peter Ustinov's first outing as Hercule Poirot, and he was an excellent choice. In the previous movie, Albert Finney was perfect because it was essential that we underestimate the Belgian sleuth. In this movie, it was essential that we did not.

Oh, and for no particular reason, I'll mention that I've always liked David Niven as a distinguished elder gentleman. When he was a young pretty boy Pink Panther with disco hair, I wasn't impressed. British gentleman Niven is in this film, as a fellow detective and a friend to Hercule Poirot. I like it.

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