Writer-director Rian Johnson has had a pretty good run. First
there was his debut feature, a film-noir about a drug-deal related murder
at a California high school [Brick (2005)]; then an
action/comedy/romance about a $3 million con [The Brothers Bloom (2008)],
followed by a mind-bending time-travel thriller [Looper (2012)], and
then the second highest grossing Star Wars film ever, Episode VIII – The
Last Jedi (2017). Now he’s back with one of the best, most entertaining
murder-mystery films of all time – the Agatha Christie homage Knives Out.
Yes, you read that right. It’s one of the very best. Better,
for example, than Murder on the Orient Express (much, much better
than the 2017 Kenneth Branagh version in particular; and better even than the
superior, star-studded Sidney Lumet/Albert Finney version of 1974.). Why? Well,
it’s more contemporary, funnier, trickier, and fresher than the 1974 Murder
on the Orient Express. That one had bigger stars, to be sure – like Lauren
Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Richard Widmark and Vanessa Redgrave, and
it had Albert Finney in the lead as Hercule Poirot. But Finney is a bit of a
stick in that film, perhaps a bit hamstrung with reverence for his iconic
character. Besides, most of that movie’s many luminaries were not given much a
chance to shine, and a number of the performances were rather indifferent as a
result. Although still a very entertaining film, the 1974 picture feels a bit
stale today.
Although Knives Out.is based on the
Christie model, it is not tied to an actual Christie story, nor does it attempt
to bring back her esteemed Mssr. Poirot or the estimable Miss Marple. In their
stead, we get the amusingly clever, supercilious Southern consulting detective
Benoit Blanc, played with considerable ebullience by a fabulous Daniel Craig.
It’s hard to precisely place Blanc’s glorious accent, but he does sound a bit
like a humorously embellished Shelby Foote, the great Civil War historian; and
Craig indeed has acknowledged that Foote’s voice was a major influence. Ever
since Layer Cake (2004), I’ve been a fan of Daniel Craig. His James Bond
is every bit as compelling (maybe more) than the Bond I grew up with (Sean
Connery). And although I was not particularly fond of Craig as a backwoods
Southern bomb-maker in Logan
Lucky (2017), that role did give him some practice with the regional
drawl, which has been vastly improved and put to good use here.
In any event, if you can imagine Christie’s Poirot, stripped
of his Belgian attributes, less prissy, more philosophical, with a deeper voice
and Deep Southern accent and aspect, you’ll have some sense of Benoit Blanc. Certainly,
he is a marvelous creation.
It’s a tradition in British manor house murder mysteries, a
movie genre to which Knives Out unabashedly belongs, to have an
ensemble of eccentric character suspects, with all or most played by well-known
actors, as in Murder on the Orient Express (although there the action
was on a train), Death On the Nile (1978 - set on a boat), or And
Then There Were None (1945), aka Ten Little Indians - and actually
set in a house!). Knives Out
is set in a stately Virginia manor; it too has got an all-star cast, and these
folks really seem to be having fun.
The story is a whodunnit revolving around the death of fabulously
wealthy crime novelist and family patriarch, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher
Plummer, marvelously imperial and plummy). Everyone in the family is at Harlan’s
house for his 85th birthday party. There’s his powerless
business-agent son Walt (a bearded Michael Shannon); his daughter-in-law,
superficial, devious Joni (Toni Colette); his proud, real estate agent daughter
Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) living on a generous allowance along with her husband,
Richard (Don Johnson), whose dirty little secret Harlan has just discovered;
and there’s Linda and Richard’s party-boy son, Ransome (a deliciously
contemptuous Chris Evans), and more.
Early the next morning old Harlan is found in his room,
bloody and dead. Looks rather like a grisly suicide. Of course, the police are
called in; and in the time-honored tradition of Poirot’s Chief inspector Japp, Sherlock
Holmes’s Inspector Lestrade, and even Clouseau’s Chief Inspector Dreyfus, Blanc
has a clueless policeman, Lieutenant Elliot (LaKeith Stanfield), to run rings
around. The earnest Elliot buys the
suicide theory, but what kind of story would that make? Blanc smells homicide. As
he quickly learns, pretty much everyone in the family had a dirty little secret
and a selfish reason to want their patriarch dead. Even Harlan’s young, dutiful
nurse and favored companion, Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) may have had a
pecuniary motive. Everyone is a suspect. Along with Blanc, Marta is our sort-of protagonist,
but while her hilarious physical reaction to prevarication of any kind may be helpful
to him, it may prove dangerous to herself.
The pace is increasingly urgent, the plot is loaded with revealing
flashbacks, and surprising, often amusing twists and turns. The intelligent screenplay,
the fascinating, frequently claustrophobic production design and inventive cinematography
(by long-time Johnson collaborator Steve Yedlin), and the overall construction
of the film all support a satisfyingly airtight, edge-of-your-seat story. All of which has earned Knives Out
a 97% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Did I mention that the deceased was a brilliant writer of
murder mysteries? He would be proud of this one. Nothing deep here; just
cinematic pleasure of the highest order – a well-made, very, very fun gem.
2 hours 10 minutes A very clean MPAA score: PG-13
Grade: A
In wide release.
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