Death on the Nile

The quintessential whodunnit movie.

Not bad, but Murder on the Orient Express is a better story and has a better cast. I prefer Finney's Poirot to Ustinov's too.

Perfectly macabre, elegant, and removed. There's no dust on the Nile.

Death on the Nile is a lot of fun from start to finish, enhanced largely by the beautiful lensing and the interesting, if somewhat silly plot. The performances range from cartoonish to subtle, with Lansbury, Smith and Ustinov taking the best lines and laughs.

At the point where Niven says "everybody could have done it and they all had a reason to, it's incredible!" I wanted to scream "no it's not, you're in an Agatha Christie novel". As with Orient Express, the writing is droningly formulaic, trivializes death and on several occasions sinks to laugh-inducing stupidity, and It's the all-star cast alone that carries the entire production. Aside from a bad German accent from Jack Warden, the performances are the film's one redeeming feature.