Review: Amid delays and scandals, a middling 'Death on the Nile' slumps into theaters

There's at least one moment in "Death on the Nile," Kenneth Branagh's latest Agatha Christie adaptation, when what's on-screen brushes up uncomfortably against what's off-screen. Linnet Doyle, an enviably rich socialite taking a honeymoon cruise down the Nile River, has just been found shot to death in her stateroom; her husband, Simon, is an inconsolable wreck, sobbing noisily over her body. Watching this oddly strained, curiously revealing scene, I had to wonder why Simon's grief rings so hollow. Could it be because the character is presented, in both the movie and Christie's 1937 novel, as a dumb, opportunistic cad? Or could it have something to do with the fact that he's played here by Armie Hammer, the former Hollywood golden boy who stands accused by multiple women of sexual