Hercule Poirot

If the average person were to be asked what Sir Kenneth Branagh had won an Oscar for, the vast majority would probably say “acting.” Then when told that, despite two Academy Award nominations, he has not been so rewarded, they might then assume that it’s his direction of such films as Henry V, Hamlet or Belfast that led him to take him gold. In fact, though, it’s his screenplay for the latter film that finally won him an Oscar in 2022, showing that Branagh is a true renaissance man; it is not for nothing that first theater company he founded was called the Renaissance. This summer has been, as usual, a busy and productive one for the actor-writer-director.

I remember enjoying Murder on the Orient Express a few years ago, when I took refuge from a real-life blizzard in a Jackson, Wyoming theater to watch Kenneth Branagh’s decadent take on Agatha Christie’s snow-covered murder mystery. It was memorably cast with big-name talent (Johnny Depp makes one heck of a sleazy bad guy) and exquisite, if sometimes over-the-top, costumes and décor. If memory serves, the movie ended as a suspenseful and satisfying cinematic treat. Death on the Nile, not so much. Branagh teased his next adaptation of an Hercule Poirot novel at the end of Orient Express, but I found his second attempt wasn't worth the five-year wait.