While this might be a divisive stance, I firmly believe you should always read the book before seeing the movie!
Of course, this will spoil the plot of the movie, you get to freely imagine the characters and experience every rich detail the author intended—all before seeing the words on paper come to life on screen. With every film adaptation that fits 300+ pages of text into 2 hours, you often lose the integrity of the story. If you’re anything like me, once you see Hollywood take on your favorite read, you might be tempted to throw your popcorn at the screen and shout, “that’s not how they did it in the book!” For me, Death on the Nile was the exception to this long-running tendency toward disappointment.
In this Agatha Christie travel mystery, Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of a socialite newlywed on her honeymoon cruise along the Nile. Although he successfully solves the crime, he fails to do so before four other guests aboard the ship meet their fatal end. For the most part, director Kenneth Branagh stayed faithful to this plot. While the page-to-screen transformation lead to some alterations in the plot, these changes added to my enjoyment, rather than to my frustration. I felt that the new backstory for Poirot and his mustache—complete with a WWI history of love and loss—provided the character an emotional depth that had not previously been illustrated in the book. However, with a reduced number of suspects sailing the Nile, it was easier to keep track of the “whodunnit” amid the complex web of alibis and motives.
Additionally, the Tiffany & Co. product placement gave a heightened elegance to this classic and harkened to the jewel thief themes of the also-popular Oceans 8 film. At the risk of giving away too many spoilers, I will end my review here. If this murder mystery at all intrigues you, make sure to see it in theaters—after you have read the book, of course.