Death on the Nile

Year:  2022

Director:  Kenneth Branagh

Screenplay:  Michael Green, based on the novel by Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

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

Running Time:  127 minutes

Genre:  Mystery

1937:  Wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gadot) and her new husband Simon Doyle (Hammer) are celebrating their honeymoon in Egypt, during which they invite a large number of family and friends to join them on a luxury cruise down the Nile.  When one of the passengers turns up dead, famed detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) finds that he has no shortage of suspects.

I have never read the Agatha Christie novel, Death on the Nile, nor have I read any of her many other books, however I have seen a lot of the film and television adaptations, and this enjoyable, old-fashioned murder mystery, a sequel to the 2017 film Murder on the Orient Express, fits in with them comfortably.  The film opens with a prologue set in 1914, which explains Hercule Poirot's impressive moustache, by suggesting that he grew the moustache to cover facial scars he suffered during his time in the First World War.  As with most Agatha Christie adaptations, there is a large number of familiar faces to provide victims and/or suspects.  The films starts leisurely, building up it's cast of characters and providing motivation as to why any of them could be the murderer.  The cast is eclectic and everyone seems to relish their roles, and it is fun to see popular British comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French as a wealthy American Communist and her devoted nurse.  It is quite odd however to see famously outrageous and flamboyant comedian Russell Brand as a quiet, strait-laced doctor.  The film was made in 2019 and was due to be released in 2020, but it was delayed several times, and in that time some of the cast have fallen out of favour, notably Armie Hammer.  Kenneth Branagh is good as the Belgian detective, and directs with impressive visual style.  While the film does drag at times, it is an enjoyably star-studded, old fashioned and largely bloodless mystery.  It may not be unmissable, and is unlikely to feature on many "Best of the Year" lists come December, but it is a fun, glitzy entertainment.

 Gal Gadot, Emma Mackey and Armie Hammer in Death on the Nile

The Social Network

Year:  2010
Director:  David Fincher
Screenplay:  Aaron Sorkin, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich
Starring:  Jesse Eiseberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Brenda Song, Rashida Jones, Rooney Mara
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  Drama

This film charts the rise of the social networking site Facebook.  At Harvard University in 2003, student Mark Zuckerberg (Eisenberg) is dumped by his girlfirend Erica Albright (Mara).  Drunk, depressed and bitter, Zuckerberg takes revenge by bad-mouthing Erica on his blog and setting up a site called Facemash, for which he steals the photographs of female undergraduates from the university's "facebooks" (on-line directories of the students photographs and details) and allows users to vote on which girl they think is the hottest.  The site is so instantly popular that it crashes Harvard's servers and makes Zuckerberg notorious on campus, while doing nothing to improve his popularity with the femalle students.  The site brings him to the attention of identical twin rowing champions Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Armie Hammer) and their friend and business partner Divya Narender (Minghella) who are planning to set up a  social networking site called "The Harvard Connection".  Zuckerberg does not think much of either the Winkelvoss twins and Narender or their site, but he is intrigued by the idea of a social network and so he and his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Garfield) set up their own site called "The Facebook" which soon becomes a Harvard sensation.  However as the site goes from strength to strength, friendships and partnerships go sour and implode and Zuckerberg finds himself mired in litigation.

At first glance a movie about a guy who sets up a web site may seem like the most boring idea for a movie ever.  Who really wants to see a guy typing on a computer for two hours?  (Coming Soon:  Permanently Weird:  The Movie.  Five hours long, in black and white).  However the film is fascinating because it is not really a film about Facebook but about the people who developed it.  It's about how, despite all the money and fame, the success of the site left a legacy of destroyed friendships and lawsuits.  Mark Zuckerberg does not come across as a particularly likeable character at all however, it is to the credit of the film-makers and Eisenberg's performance in particular, that Zuckerberg is never entirely unsympathetic.  He treats people really badly in the movie, but he often doesn't seem to realise how what he's doing affects people, and seems genuinely bewildered when people react badly to his scheming and ruthlessness.

The film is full of great performances from Eisenberg onwards, with Armie Hammer being particularly notable in the dual role of the Winklevoss twins, and also singer Justin Timberlake who ironically is cast as Sean Parker, the founder of free music sharing site Napster.  The film is elegantly made, from the stately dimly lit corridors of Harvard to the cold, bright law firm offices, and the script is compelling and shot through with plenty of unexpected humour.

There are many opinions about Facebook and similar sites, some people love them while others hate everything about them.  Personally I think that the internet has changed human social interaction for the better.  The importance of sites like Facebook is huge and, I think, only being glimpsed.  Whether you love or hate Facebook, or even if you don't know the first thing about it, this is a fascinating and powerful film.  However it is important to remember, as with all films that are "based on a true story", this is just a work of fiction.  It is a drama, intended to entertain, based on someone's idea of what happened, and not a historical document.



"You have part of my attention, you have the minimum amount.  The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook where my colleagues and I are doing things that no-one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capapable of doing.  Did I adequately answer your condescending question?"
- Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) shows how not to win friends in court.

Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) and Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in The Social Network         

J. Edgar

Year:  2011
Director:  Clint Eastwood
Screenplay:  Dustin Lance Black
Starring:  Leonadro DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench, Damon Herriman, Ed Westwick, Jeffrey Donovan
Running Time:  137 minutes
Genre:  Drama, biography

This film tells the true life story of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.  In the 1960s, Hoover (DiCaprio) dictates the story of his rise to power to a succession of young agents.  In 1919, a 24 year old Hoover makes a mark by targeting alleged Communists after a series of letter bombs are delivered to prominent politicians and public figures in Washingotn D.C.  After being appointed Director of the Bureau of Investigation, Hoover's scientific methods of criminal investigation are brought to bear in the high-profile Lindbergh baby kidnapping case.  However, in the 1930s, when the FBI declares war on the "public enemies" (famous gangsters and bank robbers such as Al Capone and John Dillinger), Hoover becomes a household name.  However as time passes Hoover becomes increasingly paranoid and obsessed with surveillance, building up bulky covert files on countless American citizens (both guilty and innocent).  At the same time he is troubled by his repressed homosexuality, and desire for his best friend, Clyde Tolson (Hammer).

This is a film which is easier to admire than like.  It boasts a strong central performance from DiCaprio who has the difficult task of portraying a complex man from his mid-twenties to late seventies, it is well shot with immaculate production design and period detail.  Visually the film employs a palette which seems to bleed all the colour from a scene making it look virtually black-and-white.  For a film that mostly takes place in gloomy, cavernous offices, it gives it an appropriately somber look.  However, the film suffers trying to pack in seven decades of American history into about two and a quarter hours, which means that many important and interesting elements are either skipped over or ignored entirely (most notably Hoover's relationship with Melvin Purvis, who was at one time the FBI's number one agent  and became famous for shooting John Dillinger.  However, allegedly jealous at Purvis' fame, Hoover turned on him).  Another problem that the film has is the prosthetic make-up for when the actors play their older characters, DiCaprio's is fine, but Hammer's just looks comical, like a rubber mask.  Also the film is very slow at times.  Hoover promoted an image of the sharp-suited, square-jawed, clean-cut, gun-toting FBI "G-Man", but he himself was a man who spent his career behind a desk, and much of the film is basically people talking in offices.  Action is kept to a minimum, and that which there is strongly hinted to be a product of Hoover's own self-mythologising.

For a man who was preoccupied with the private lives of others, and was always hungry for fame and publicity,  Hoover kept his own private life a closely guarded secret.  The film makes it pretty clear that Hoover was gay but very deep in the closet.  In one chilling scene, Hoover tries to explain to his mother (Judi Dench) that he is not interested in women and his mother harshly responds that "I would rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son."  One of the most famous rumours about J. Edgar Hoover was that he was a transvestite, although this has since been discredited.  It's not even mentioned in the film. 

A film that is so focussed on it's central character means that the other characters rarely have much of a chance to make an impression.  Armie Hammer is impressive as Hoover's close friend, Clyde Tolson, which the film depicts as having  along term almost-romance with Hoover, Naomi Watts is underused as Helen Gandy, Hoover's long-serving secretary and Judi Dench gives a good perfomance as Hoover's sour, deeply religious mother.  DiCaprio plays Hoover with sympathy and sensitivity, no matter how unpleasant the things he does.  Hoover comes across as a bully and a power-hungry manipulator, who would do everything and anything to get what he wanted.  However, it is a testament to DiCaprio's skill and the film's script that Hoover emerges as a sympathetic, if not likeable, character.

This is an interesting enough movie, and makes a good attempt to explain an extremely complex man.  In fact, it is good enough that it is really frustrating that it is not better.

Leonardo DiCaprio in J. Edgar