Christie on the Nile

REMEMBER THE LAST Agatha Christie movie? You know, where all the people on the train had it out for this rich guy, who gets killed, and the great French detective goes through the suspects one by one trying to figure out which one did it, and it turns out it wasn't just one who did it, it was all of them. Remember? Well, keep that basic structure in mind and change some of the details and you've got the latest Agatha Christie movie, Death on the Nile, an enjoyable if formulaic story set on a cruise down the lush, life-giving Nile River.

This time around, a rich, beautiful, young heiress honeymooning in Egypt--ah, the stuff of which murder victims are made--is killed in her stateroom while everyone else's attention is on the groom, who has been shot in the leg by the drunk, half-crazed woman he jilted to marry the heiress. Also on board this floating Orient Express is the legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), who hears all, sees all, and eats all, at least to judge by his bulk. Add one American lawyer trying to cover up the fact that he has been embezzling the heiress's money, and balance with one English lawyer keeping his eye on the American lawyer. Throw in an aging writer of, ahem, "romantic novels and her daughter, a Washington socialite and her servant-companion, a Marxist, a Viennese doctor of dubious integrity, and the heiress's maidservant, all of whom wanted the victim dead, and you have the basic recipe for another of the seemingly endless series of Christie whodunits. The only thing that seems to differentiate a good Christie mystery movie from a bad one, besides the guessability of the inevitable twist at the end, is how well the film can keep us amused, engaged in individual scenes while our minds race along trying to figure out which loser will get found out by Poirot.

Death on the Nile, by this standard, is a good Christie movie. The film opens on the lush greens and browns of the sprawling English country estate of Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles), who agrees to do best friend Jackie (Mia Farrow) a favor by hiring her fiance as groundskeeper. Fiance (Simon MacCarkindale)--Cambridge-educated, handsome, but broke--shows up, and he and Linnet engage in heavy eye contact. Soon it's wedding bells, but not not Mia, who devotes herself to pursuing the lovebirds around the world and ruining their honeymoon. She pops up on top of a pyramid in Egypt, to which the lovers have raced their steeds across the desert sands and then struggled upwards, step-by-step. Finally the lucky couple ditch her in the streets of an unidentified Egyptian city, and board, and board their cruise down the Nile, servent in tow.

Meanwhile, the socialite (Bette Davis) and her bitchy companion (Maggie Smith) have set out for the same cruise, as have the novelist Salome Ottoban and her daughter. When Linnet's cheating lawyer (George Kennedy) hears of her marriage, his shady schemes are jeopardized and he sets off for Egypt to protect himself. Ridgeway's English lawyers are watching him, and they dispatch David Niven to the scene. Simultaneously, the Viennese doctor is trying to persuade Ridgeway not to go on trying to ruin his clinic, which has caused her friend to die, and the Marxist and Poirot are on the same boat. Small world.

The scenery is lush, the cinematography beautiful. Scenes of the pyramids, the Sphinx and the desert sands take turns with the blues of the sky and river, the green palms and the multi-colored chaos of the crowded street bazaars. The film captures well the contrast between the eternal mysterious Egyptian land, and the seemy, passionate turmoil of the cruisers, who float majestically down the Nile while plotting their little intrigues. Director of photography Jack Cardiff also filmed "Caesar and Cleopatra" and he really knows the turf.

The floating powder keg needs only a spark to explode. It soon gets one, as Mia Farrow shows up again and boards the cruise. One night in the saloon she shoots her ex-lover in the leg, dropping the gun on the floor in panic. The doctor leads Fiance away, while the socialite's companion (a nurse) looks after Mia. When the Marxist goes for the gun, it's missing. Next morning, Ridgeway is found shot, with a J drawn in blood on the wall next to her. But it can't be Jackie, who was in sight of the nurse all night. Elimination time.

The husband can't walk with a broken leg. The doctor? He had a motive, which Poirot overheard while eavesdropping, but he seems too weakwilled to kill. The Marxist--who Poirot heard saying in a just world Ridgeway "would be killed as a warning to the others"--possible, but unlikely. The maid, who discovered the body, might have done it, since Ridgeway would not give her her salary and let her go to meet her husband-to-be. How about the socialite, who might have done it to get the pearls, which are discovered missing? Who knows?

All the actors play their parts well, some more than others. Ustinov is fine as the supersleuth, but you wish he'd stop taking offense so often for being called French, not Belgian. Still, that's the screenwriter's fault more than Ustinov's. Niven is the quintessential unflappable Englishman, Bette Davis is right at home as a rich old bitch, and Chiles is a fine wealthy corpse. Mia Farrow is convincingly half-crazy, as usual. Some of the characters are drawn a little woodenly, and the script is nothing much to speak of. But then, neither is the Christie original. As detective stories go, this one is pretty good, what with the beauty of Egypt thrown in above and beyond the call of plot twists and guessing games. If you like this sort of thing, go. Or if you prefer trains, see Murder on the Orient Express again.