Every Agatha Christie Movie With Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot, Ranked

Although the "Knives Out" murder mystery series gets all the buzz these days, the recent Hercule Poirot films (directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh) deserve some love too. They may not be winning an Academy Award any time soon, but all three of them are fun watches. You can tell that Branagh loves playing this ridiculous French detective, and whoever's in charge of the period-specific outfits and set design is clearly having a good time with it too.

Perhaps most impressive is that Branagh has added more depth to Poirot than the books did, although I realize that might sound blasphemous to say. Poirot in the books is generally held at arm's length from the narration, whereas Branagh's approach largely keeps us in his head. Sometimes Branagh's attempts to humanize Poirot don't work — see that ridiculous flashback origin story for his mustache in "Death on the Nile" — but it's an admirable approach overall. 

Christie reportedly didn't like Poirot that much. According to one screenwriter who worked with her, "There were clearly things about this personality that she had created which really wound her up. He was petty and sort of egotistical — these things that make Poirot the great character he is." But while Christie never loved Poirot, Branagh clearly does, and that helps these movies shine even when the script is lacking. 

So, here's my ranking of the Poirot movies we've gotten so far, ranked from worst to best. Please note that even the worst movie on this list is still a fun watch.

From Gal Gadot's strange line deliveries to the giant elephant in the room that was Armie Hammer's presence in the cast, "Death on the Nile" is the movie that everyone on the internet loves to make fun of. And honestly, they should: the characters are shallow cut-outs, the mystery is predictable, and the resolution to it all ends with an awkward thud rather than anything exciting or thought-provoking. 

Perhaps most damning is the way this movie waters down the (already fairly tame) class commentary from the source material. In the book there's an angry young communist character who is highly suspected of being a murderer but is ultimately vindicated. The movie changes this character to a champagne socialist, and then abandons the class commentary altogether when it reveals the socialist character is secretly in love with her nurse. I don't mind major changes to the source material in these movies (see my No. 1 pick), but this is one that actively made the story less interesting. 

The biggest issue with "Death on the Nile" is that the central mystery is weak. It all relies on a twist to the murder mystery format that might've been new and surprising in 1937, but has since been done to death in countless other mystery stories. The only thing that makes the mystery hard to solve is an assumption the movie hopes you'll make, but most savvy modern viewers won't be sticking to that assumption at all. 

You'd think this would be my favorite of the series, given that there's nothing better than a good train movie and "Murder on the Orient Express" was definitely one of Christie's best novels. But this is a movie that really struggles to give its star-studded cast their proper time in the spotlight. This is a story with over a dozen suspects, all of whom play a significant role in the main mystery, but the movie's 2-hour runtime doesn't have the book's ability to flesh them out properly. 

The result is a movie where the final reveal feels like a bit of a cheat, even if it does throw Poirot into his most interesting moral dilemma in the whole series. It may have seemed like a smart choice for Branagh to adapt the most thematically rich and memorable book in Christie's Poirot series, but the more I watch this movie the more I feel like he should've saved this one for later. Branagh's angst in the final few scenes would've hit better if a lighter, breezier movie had come first. 

It feels like this is a movie trapped by the brilliant source material; the next two movies would feel free to make major adaptive flourishes without a care in the world, whereas this movie struggled to squeeze in as much of the book as possible. The result was a promising start to this new Poirot movie series, but not a great movie in its own right. 

Not only do I think "A Haunting in Venice" is the best movie of the three, but I think it's leaps and bounds above the other two. It's beautifully filmed with a constant creepy atmosphere, and Tina Fey's new role as the respectably sleazy crime author Ariadne Oliver was a welcome addition to the series. It's the only movie of the three where the mystery feels fully developed, with all the suspects getting their time to shine. 

What makes "A Haunting in Venice" more impressive is that it's adapting what's easily the worst book of the series so far. The book is an adaptation of "The Hallowe'en Party," a late-career Christie work that felt rushed, uninspired, and unusually meanspirited. Perhaps it's because of how unpopular this book is that the screenwriters felt confident enough to make truly major changes. "A Haunting in Venice" is borderline unrecognizable from its source material, and that's the best thing about it. There's a sense of creative freedom behind this project that the previous two films didn't have, with none of the usual adaptive strains. 

After two sloppy-but-fun opening entries, "A Haunting in Venice" is the Branagh Poirot film where the cast and crew suddenly locked in. We don't know yet which book the next Poirot film will adapt, but hopefully the series will continue this movie's approach of picking the books that nobody's too attached to. Branagh should keep picking the weaker Christie novels, using them as loose blueprints to just go nuts like he did here.