Knives Out
- An entertaining movie from start to finish. Just a fun murder mystery, brilliantly conceived.
Full Disclosure: I’ve been interested in seeing this movie ever since I first saw a trailer for it several months ago. It was the cast that first caught my attention – but I’ve also been impressed with some recent movies set almost entirely in one house, such as the excellent, but overlooked Ready or Not. I’m curious to see what screenwriters and directors can do with a one-location story.
Review
I can’t imagine that Rian Johnson set out to become a controversial director, and certainly not a hated one, but that’s definitely what happened after The Last Jedi where, after viewing that cinematic endeavour, a very vocal minority hopes that he’ll choke on his Thanksgiving turkey. I’m not one of them. I actually enjoyed what he did to take the Star Wars saga in a new direction (although yes, I wish that direction hadn’t included a detour to Casino Planet). That said, it’s maybe hard to remember that Johnson was once known for smaller, sometimes-quirky movies like Brick, The Brothers Bloom, and Looper.
Knives Out is about as different from Star Wars as you can get. It’s a very contained story, with no pretenses to an expanded universe, and really, little acknowledgement of anything outside of the squabbling family at its centre, aside from a couple of arguments about politics. The concept is simple enough: the patriarch of the wealthy Thrombey family is dead, and although the initial determination by the police is that it was a suicide, a famous detective named Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig with an outrageous southern accent) has his suspicions and wants to question each member of the family.
There are a number of ways a director can chose to go with a classic whodunnit flick. Johnson went with a strange alchemy of the plot intrigue of an Agatha Christie mystery with the humour and satire ofClue, and somehow hit on every level. The first, and most important thing about this movie is that it’s fun. You will enjoy watching this movie. We’re not talking any deep and meaningful fare here, but for what Johnson is trying to do, it’s masterfully done. It’s a movie that balances perfectly on the edge. It’s tongue-in-cheek without ever quite crossing over into being absurd. It’s comical, witty, and clever, without trying to outsmart its audience in an insecure attempt to prove its cleverness.
Part of the amazing cast of Knives Out. Every single one of them buys in and delivers a unique character and comedy in spades .
Oh, and can we talk about that cast? From Christopher Plummer as the family patriarch, Harlan Thrombey, still going strong at 89 years old, whose wry smile fits perfectly with the tone of the film, to Toni Collette as a flighty daughter-in-law, to rising star Ana de Armas, the closest thing the movie has to a protagonist, as Harlan’s nurse, Marta. There are, frankly, too many good performances to name, but when the cast goes at least 10 deep with recognizable actors who have all bought in to the director’s vision (including a hilarious brief role as a lawyer for Frank freaking Oz, Mr. Yoda himself) you know it’s going to be a fun ride as long as the script holds up.
The script definitely holds up. Sometimes with murder mysteries, the writers are trying to add so many twists that they just end up confusing themselves and the audience (Key & Peele’s “Mexican Standoff” sketch- funny because it’s true). There are some twists inKnives Out, but they seem to happen organically. The movie isn’t trying to put one over on the audience, it’s asking the audience to come along for the ride as the characters in the film try to figure out what the hell really happened. It’s a whodunnit, but not just about the main question concerning Harlan’s death. The Thrombey family is incapable of being honest with each other, or even being civil with each other most of the time, and it’s the family interactions between all of those crazy characters, as truths come to light, that make for an entertaining film.
Spoilers Ahead
Ana de Armas, the closest thing this movie has to a lead performance, in an understated, and possibly star-making turn.
One of the elements that speaks to the genius of this movie is that there are so many little things that happen throughout the first half of the story that one suspects will play a role later on, yet it’s never clear exactly how they’ll impact the story until they play in out often unforeseen ways.
A perfect example of this is in the simple object of a baseball. At the beginning of the movie it sits on Harlan’s desk as a collector’s item. It’s later thrown laughably out the window, in anger, by Don Johnson’s character (Harlan’s son-in-law) when he discovers that a letter that Harlan was threatening him with is blank. The ball gets carried around for most of the movie by a dog, only to be placed back on the desk near the end of the film by Jamie Lee Curtis’ character (Johnson’s wife), where she discovers the “blank” letter but, in a call back to an earlier conversation where she mentioned that her and her father were so close they had their own form of communication, she uses a lighter to reveal the invisible ink and discovers that her husband has been cheating on her.
The movie is filled with this kind of clever plotting, all of which happens as a result of events connected to the main investigation into Harlan’s death. These aren’t twists that come out of nowhere. Everything is set up earlier in the film and progresses naturally. As for the investigation, we’re told fairly early on that Marta believes she accidentally killed Harlan by switching his medicine. However, because this comes early in the film we follow along with a number of other questions in mind – Was it really an accident? Will Blanc find out? Who will get the inheritance? Was anyone else somehow responsible for the accident?
It all keeps our interest because the characters are so fun to watch, and the dialogue so funny, that in the end, it doesn’t really even matter what the answers are. We’re rooting for Marta, of course, but knowing it’s a mystery, it’s hard to go all in just in case she might not be who she seems. The fact that Chris Evans, out of his Captain American garb and back to playing arrogant jerks, is the real villain comes as almost a relief rather than a surprise.
Daniel Craig, as the internet-famous detective Benoit Blanc, is both over-the-top, endearing, and hilarious.
5 Quick Hits
I really loved how the movie called out and questioned whether or not Craig’s character is actually a good detective or not. Too many mysteries fall into the Sherlock Holmes stereotype, where the detective is so much smarter than everyone else. This movie doesn’t. In one scene, Marta directly tells him that he’s not a very good detective as she’s just handing him the key piece of evidence.
Speaking of Craig, his accent is over-the-top, but not in a mocking way, it just adds to the humour and delightfulness of his character. He has one speech where he likens the case to a donut with a hole in the middle. Although Craig’s character beats the analogy to death, and includes the great line, “There’s a donut hole in the donut’s hole!”, Craig hits just the right tone of earnestness so that the humour just pours out.
The movie didn’t dwell on politics much, but there were a few funny arguments about the various characters’ political beliefs. One of the most poignant running gags, however, was that while the family all protested that Marta was “one of the family”, every time one of them would mention her, they would casually mention a different Latin American country as her place of origin.
I haven’t even mentioned Michael Shannon, who played another one of Harlan’s kids, and was fantastic in his usual angry-and-somewhat-socially-awkward-man role.
Finally, sometimes there’s fun in anticipation that doesn’t pay off in the way you’d expect. K Callan plays Harlan’s mother (the joke is that no one knows how old she is), and for the most part she just sits and watches the lunacy around her for the entire film. We keep expecting that she’ll do something. And while she does factor into the final reveal and discover of the plot, all she does in reaction to the climatic events is smile and give a little half-laugh. It’s so understated, and such a great counterpoint to all of the other characters.
