May 31, 2022

Teresa Reviews “Appointment with Death” (2009)

Teresa Peschel Agatha Christie Movies, Teresa's Book and Movie Reviews

Fidelity to text: 1 spike

You know it’s bad when a faithful series opens with a title card saying “based upon.” “Loosely based” or “the names match” would have been more accurate.

Quality of movie on its own: 2 spikes

Morocco (standing in for Syria) looks fabulous! The actors emote with the best of them. Nice music (most of the time), too, except when it falls into B-movie clichés.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast.

reviews appointment with death 2009 title card — We were warned.

I was disappointed with Peter Ustinov’s version of the novel. It was an appointment with tedium. This one is worse. It’s an appointment with drivel and absurd hack screenwriting using clichés that Agatha herself disparaged. I’m referring, naturally, to white slavers kidnapping gorgeous auburn-haired teenage girls for a life in the sex trade.

You say there were no white slavers in Appointment with Death? You’re right! There were also no nuns who were — wait for it — disguised as white slavers! Even more weirdly, Sister Agnieszka is not just Polish and a white slaver, but she prays when no one’s around. Um, sure. Murderous slavers pray for … Not getting caught? Forgiveness of sins? If Sister Agnieszka was truly devout, she’d either not be a slaver and thus could escape this movie or she’s under duress and kidnapping girls like Jinny is the only way she can free hundreds of other innocent girls being held captive in caves along the Moroccan coast and destined for sex slavery.

reviews appointment with death 2009 Sister Agnieszka — White slavers always pray before a kidnapping.

Sister Agnieszka’s plot gets sillier. Someone kidnaps Jinny in the middle of camp, while they’re surrounded by dozens of eyes and ears. Jinny attacks the person trying to shove a hood over her head a rock. Who gets injured by having a sharp rock bashed into their head? Sister Agnieszka. But is Sister Agnieszka outed as being the criminal, because there’s no evidence of anyone sneaking into the crowded, busy camp? No, despite no evidence to the contrary, someone must have sneaked into the camp. Eventually, she’s unmasked by Poirot (How did he know? The script told him.) but he turns to unmasking the murderers so Sister Agnieszka steals a truck and vanishes into the desert. Despite her time in deserts, she didn’t learn to bring water with her.

The entire, 80-minute movie is more of the same. Every time it gets clever or interesting, it spins on a dime and sinks to a new low. The plot is horribly convoluted with no clear motivations or backstories and unfinished themes laying about everywhere, yet the producers couldn’t spend an additional 10 minutes of film to a) make this a feature-length film and b) explain what’s going on. Is a 90-minute movie too much to ask for?

What else was wrong, you ask? Lots.

How do you feel about gruesome child abuse scenes? This, despite the fact that Lady Boynton was a psychological sadist, not a physical one. But wait! It was psychological. She sat and listened while Nanny Taylor administered the beatings and waterboarding. Except why did Nanny Taylor hang around that house of horrors? What hold did Lady Boynton have over her? She didn’t seem to enjoy torturing children but she didn’t leave either. Why was she afraid when Lady Boynton died? No explanation.

Lady Boynton underwent changes, too. She’s no longer a former prison matron and widow with three stepchildren and one natural daughter. Here she adopted those three kids to have torture subjects. She’s a brilliant and wealthy financial investor. She married Lord Boynton, archeologist with a fixation on finding the head of John the Baptist. Lord Boynton may be a dedicated archeologist but he can’t grasp how Lady Boynton treats everyone else around her. And the fourth child? That would be Lennox, now Leonard, and he’s a stepson but that’s because he’s Lord Boynton’s son and heir to the title. He’s got to keep things running while dad chases around the Syrian desert looking for a single, special skull in a landscape that must be littered with them.

Lennox’s wife Nadine is gone.

Jefferson Cope gets a radical rewrite and then his story vanishes, despite how much he has in common with Lady Boynton’s punching bags and Leonard Boynton. Did we get a scene where these people, all severely damaged by Lady Boynton, connect? No, we did not. Eighty-minute running time, remember, those precious minutes wasted on slave-trading nuns.

Sarah King, girl doctor, does show up. She falls madly in love with Raymond Boynton within seconds of meeting him but why? They had zero chemistry. He was a sullen lump who ignored her. The script demanded it. The script also demanded that her competence as a doctor come and go. Sometimes, she knows what she’s doing. Yet she completely misses the presence of wax smeared across Lady Boynton’s bloody clothes and body.

Dame Westholme? Why yes! Lady Westholme, MP and former prisoner of Mrs. Boynton, has morphed into Celia Westholme, well-known travel writer and former housemaid to Lady Boynton. While working for Lady Boynton (then Mrs. Pierce) our Celia had a fling with a guest, got pregnant, had her baby (Jinny) stolen by Lady Boynton, and was shipped off to a convent in Ireland. Twenty years later, she’s out for revenge, which is why she appears dramatically, riding in on a camel like Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia.

reviews appointment with death 2009 dramatic entrance — (Cue Dramatic Music)

Why’d she wait so long? Because the plot insisted. Did she keep in touch with her lover? No, apparently not, until suddenly, Celia learned that Jinny was being abused and then equally suddenly, spotted her lover in Vienna.

They hatched the plot to murder Lady Boynton, and I won’t say that Lady Boynton didn’t deserve it. But it was ridiculously complex.

The ending was terrible. Poirot reveals the absurdly complicated plot and backstory (pulling them out of a box of archeological relics) connecting everyone, including Dr. Gerard. He’s still a shrink, but he’s no longer French. He’s Scottish. He’s also Celia’s long-ago lover and Jinny’s secret father! Which is why when she comes on to him (because the plot demanded she behave like a slut), he pushes her away.

Poirot lectures everyone in the tent about their sins and then, in front of Jinny and her siblings, pushes Celia and Dr. Gerard into confessing and committing suicide. Yep, Jinny meets her birth parents and watches them die within a span of three minutes. And Poirot is fine with this, despite the fact that if anyone deserved death, it’s Lady Boynton. He let the Orient Express crew off for that reason. Not these two. I guess Jinny deserved more punishment for existing.