The Man In The Brown Suit (1989)

An American woman (Stephanie Zimbalist) on vacation in Egypt sees a man (Federico Luciano) killed and discovers a piece of paper the man had on him on which is written a cryptic note with a name and some numbers. Thus begins an exciting and dangerous adventure. Based on the novel by Agatha Christie and directed by Alan Grint. The screenplay roughly follows the Christie novel with many changes including making the heroine American rather than English, setting the story in the Middle East rather than South Africa and weak attempts at humor which are not in the Christie source material. Rather than a murder mystery, the Christie novel is a thriller with a constantly in danger damsel in distress. It's one of her lesser works. It's a lazy piece of film making. For example, one of the characters disguises himself as a woman but he's still instantly recognizable as his character and not only does no one notice, they are shocked when it is revealed. The acting is adequate and in Tony Randall (as a missionary), less than that, he's embarrassingly bad. With Ken Howard, Rue McClanahan, Edward Woodward, Nickolas Grace, Maria Casal and Simon Dutton.