Director Kenneth Branagh
Written by Michael Green.
Based on the novel by Agatha Christie

Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Kenneth Branagh, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Dawn French, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo , Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright.

A short time after the events in the first movie, and Poirot (Branagh) is vacationing in Egypt after having solved another crime between films. He runs into his good friend Buic (Bateman), now between jobs having been let go from the Orient Express. Buic invites Poirot to a surprise wedding of his friends Hammer and Gadot.

Poirot is then asked by the bride and groom to keep an eye on them, as his jilted ex has been following them wherever they go, and soon is on the very same River Nile cruise with them, as well as a swarm of others having been in attendance at the wedding.

When a murder occurs on board the night after a violent altercation between several members of the passengers, Poirot must use his world famous detective skills to work out who the killer is. However when the murderer ups the body count, Poirot might be in for a tougher job than he thought he would need to do.

Somewhat disappointing follow up to the only okay 2017 film Murder on the Orient Express, takes far too long to get going, but when it does, it is fairly exciting.

That the main murder happens over an hour into the two hour plus runtime hampers the narrative, as there is more lead up to the murder than there is trying to work out who the killer is.

It is not as dark or edgy as the first movie, and the lack of elemental threat that the first film had with the train derailment, which added to the tension – there is none of that here. It is however more violent and deadly than the first, which somewhat makes up for that.

The upside, it delves deeper into the psyche of Poirot, and why he is the way he is – and why he sports his fantastic mustache. His lost love and the longing to be happy, those who wish him to be happy, and those who do not is a theme throughout the film.

Once again the movie feels as though it is somewhat self-indulgent of Branagh – somewhat less this time however than what the first movie.

This is in no way a bad film, but it could have done with some editing throughout the first hour, and this causes pacing issues throughout.

That being said, it was a pretty hard whodunit, to figure out.

2/5