Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Michelle Yeoh, Riccardo Scamarcio, Dylan Corbett-Bader, Amir El-Masry, Ferando Piloni, Lorenzo Acquaviva, David Menkin, Camille Cottin, Jude Hill, Rowen Robinson, Emma Laird, Vanessa Ifediora, Kyle Allen, Ali Khan, Esther Rae Tillotson, Winnie Soldi.
Agatha Christie is the queen of crime, but even those of literary royal blood must admit that there is a period of time in their career that just doesn’t align itself to any other; and the longer the reign, the more likely it is to be at the final curtain that the illumination starts to fade; literature aping real life as the spell can be, hopefully not broken, but perhaps witnessed for what it is; a last hurrah of a genius mind.
It is the manipulation of the masses that keeps the writer in the public eye, and whilst the 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party is not amongst the favourites ever quoted by the fan when pressed into confessing their favourite tales of murder, mystery and the subversion of established order, and yet in the right hands even the fiercest denier could be hard pressed to say that no book is irredeemable.
So it falls to Michael Green’s screenplay and the distinguished Kenneth Branagh to fix what was arguably wrong, what was missing on the details as Ms. Christie was coming to the end of her illustrious writing is fixed in such a way that that what appears on the cinema screen is absolute magic.
In the third outing for the much-loved actor as the iconic private detective and fastidious personality, Kenneth Branagh arguably delivers the pièce de résistance of his inhabitation of the role so far.
It is almost as if Mr. Brannagh, indeed Hercule Poirot, required a lesser tale, a less understood tale in which to truly capture the nature of the man and the intimate observation available, the clue followed, and seized upon with the ferocity of a tiger scenting hot blood.
A Haunting In Venice is the gothic haunted house mystery to which Poirot on the big screen deserves, and its adapted name is one that gives the watcher the thrill that was missing in Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile. It also afford the true armchair detective the opportunity to see beyond the who which frames the previous films, and instead captures the nemesis of any investigation, the why. Why did the young woman die? The who is secondary in this particular outing, the why is the twist that is fully required.
The confining and claustrophobic nature in A Haunting In Venice is to be applauded, to be admired, the sense of depth of the that the shadows offers, the psychological angle is just a little too uncomfortable and it is delicious to behold; and with a Tina Fey giving a first class performance as novelist Ariadne Oliver and Jamie Dornan and Michelle Yeoh offering superb supporting executions in their respective roles, the film is a tremendous example of persistence in belief, and deserves to be seen more as just the spectacle in which the two previous films almost were drowning in.
A classy film, one of the finer adaptations of the queen of crime’s mountainous work.
Ian D. Hall