A HAUNTING IN VENICE

CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS AND A SENSE OF RELIEF

The first thing to say about this third outing for Kenneth Branagh's incarnation of Hercule Poirot is that it's easily the best of them so far. Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile were both saddled with, and suffered from, the inevitable comparisons with the earlier Brabourne-Goodwin film versions, which have since become much-loved classics along with Evil Under The Sun and, to a lesser extent, The Mirror Crack'd, thanks to the sense of fun, glamour, crafty plotting and casts heaving with Hollywood legends from Bette Davis to Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor to James Mason. (Let's draw a discreet veil over Michael Winner's later Appointment With Death.) I was massively relieved when, having done two of the Brabourne-Goodwins, Branagh elected not to tackle Evil Under The Sun as I have a lot of love for that film: the first VHS tape we rented and a long-standing family favourite (and the Cole Porter-adapted soundtrack is glorious).

A Haunting In Venice, nominally based on Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, is more able to stand on its own terms, partly because the only other adaptation is the ITV version with David Suchet, and partly because it has very little to do with the book anyway. In a sense they've Moonrakered it: kept some of the character names, thrown the rest of the source novel away and fashioned an entirely new story (Hallowe'en Party is another English village mystery). Poirot is now a retired recluse living in Venice, weary of death and murder and refusing to take any more cases. Until his old friend, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), turns up and convinces him to attend a Hallowe'en seance at an enormous palazzo rumoured to be haunted... Murder, obviously, ensues.

With its ominous, dimly-lit, creepy old house, its array of shifty and secretive characters, its jump moments, and occasional hints towards the supernatural, plus a vivid thunderstorm, much of A Haunting In Venice plays less as elegant whodunnit and more as full-blooded gothic horror (a genre in which Branagh has form, with his Frankenstein, and the much underappreciated Dead Again), possibly even bordering on giallo. Ultimately, though, it is a whodunnit and it requires the traditional unmasking which, as usual, fooled me completely: I had no idea who the killer was though to be honest I was having too much macabre fun to sift through the clues and work it out for myself.

Perversely perhaps, the relative absence of an Oscar-laden megastar cast of familiar faces worked to its advantage. But it wouldn't be a Poirot without an unmasking and the villain here is Hildur Gundadottir, who has given the film an inexplicably miserable sawing-a-cello-in-half score that absolutely fails to enhance the film (and is a frankly dreary listen on its own). Branagh's regular composer Patrick Doyle would have given it some full-blooded energy, but he had to pass as he was working on a Coronation March at the time. But given that they were in Venice anyway, why didn't they just go round to Pino Donaggio's place? At least that would have made up for his Ordeal By Innocence score being rejected back in 1984 in favour of Dave Brubeck honkings! Gudnadottir's joyless dirges do nothing to assist in the drama, the mystery or the horror and form the one major flaw in an otherwise mostly successful movie. While it's never going to supplant the colourful romp of Evil Under The Sun as a favourite Christie adaptation, it's the best of Branagh's - even the moustache isn't a distraction this time out - and a fourth or even fifth trip to the Poirot well would be most welcome.

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