Rating: ***
Review Date: 10/29/23
Director: Guy Hamilton
Music: Cole Porter
Cast: Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Diana Rigg, Jane Birkin,
Nicholas Clay, Roddy McDowall, James Mason, Sylvia Miles, Denis Quilley
"If you were a man, I'd divorce you!"
Master detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is hired to look into an insurance fraud case, which takes him to a wonderfully remote island resort in the Adriatic Sea. Tensions rise when actress Arlena Marshall (delightfully bitchy Diana Rigg) shows up, and it doesn't take long for her to end up dead. Conveniently, everyone on the island had a reason for wanting her dead, and everyone has an alibi for where they were at the time of Arlena's murder. Poirot has his work cut out for him as he grills all of the guests, trying to make sense of the seemingly impossible crime.
Ustinov's Poirot is more likable this time, compared to the previous "Death On The Nile" (1978), but the setup is nearly identical. The idyllic scenery is fantastic and made me long for a Mediterranean getaway, although locations like this either no longer exist or are completely out of reach. The all-star cast is wonderful, and both Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith steal the show with their verbal sparring. Jane Birkin also gives an excellent performance as Nicholas Clay's long-suffering shrew of a wife, and is the only character that the audience is invited to empathize with. Director Guy Hamilton does an excellent job of misdirecting the viewer, while keeping everything in plain sight. A careful post-examination of the film reveals how cleverly constructed it is, although it was impossible for me to keep track of everything while I was watching it.
Not surprisingly, the plot relies heavily on coincidence and chance for the Poirot formula to work, but it's so fun to watch that I really didn't mind. However, a last-minute twist is so ridiculous and out of character that I couldn't make sense of what was happening, which ended the film on a confusing and unsatisfying note. Similarly, the film gets off to a rough start when a corpse shows up in the first minute, and they're clearly breathing. That seems like it would have been an obvious candidate for reshoots or multiple takes, but I know from personal experience how hard it is to see details through a camera viewfinder. If you're a fan of Agatha Christie's "Death On The Nile" or "Murder On The Orient Express" (1974), this offers more of the same, just in a different locale.