I'm not quite sure why Albert Finney did not want to play Hercule Poirot again after the smash success of the all star Murder on the Orient Express. It certainly would have provided him with steady work and a well known fictional character to be identified with.<br /><br />Finney's decision was Peter Ustinov's gain and our good fortune. Even with two Academy Awards for two vastly different parts, I think most people remember Peter Ustinov as both the big and small screen Belgian sleuth. <br /><br />Given Poirot's eye for detail something Adrian Monk could envy and his stunning success rate one might think that if homicide were planned as it was very carefully in Death on the Nile, if Hercule Poirot is around, call off the plans and save them for another day. Of course if potential perpetrators did that, then Agatha Christie would run fresh out of story ideas.<br /><br />As he often does Poirot just happens to be on the seen when a very filthy rich American heiress, the Paris Hilton of the Thirties is shot and killed while on a honeymoon on a Nile cruise.<br /><br />There's sure no lack of suspects. Her family attorney George Kennedy is on the scene, a flamboyant mystery writer Angela Lansbury. an old dowager and her companion Bette Davis and Maggie Smith, an old flame of the groom Mia Farrow, and the groom himself Simon MacCorkindale.<br /><br />It's a clever plot actually involving some risk to the doer. But witnesses pop up and that's where things go awry. <br /><br />David Niven is on the scene as well. Poirot's normal Watson, Hastings is not accompanying him so Niven pinch hits. That's a bit of an inside joke because Peter Ustinov made his screen debut in David Niven's The Way Ahead and in the British army he was Niven's orderly back in the day.<br /><br />My favorite in the film however is Jack Warden who plays a quack German doctor who confesses treating a patient with armadillo urine. I'll bet it was one expensive armadillo.<br /><br />For fans of Agatha Christie's immortal Belgian sleuth everywhere.