Branagh's playing around at being Poirot would always get a second go, and so here it is. What it does do dfferently from the Peter Ustinov classic is creating a preamble to explain the passengers on the boat and Poirot himself, as a damaged WWI veteran who has to solve multiple murders. No real changes to the 1978 version then, but at least it comes up with a decent cast (including, quite oddly, French and Saunders). The faked Egyptian setting doesn't get much of a look in, but Agatha Christie wasn't ever too concerned with that, so the film is just dutifully following the source text. The director could do with moving away from remakes, though, since while he does the job competently enough, a good part of the audience already knows what's going to happen and this rather takes away the key selling point of a whodunit.
6/10
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