For me, mystery films have always been the hardest ones to
review because it’s difficult to discuss them in any meaningful capacity
without giving away the juicy details. Knives Out makes it especially tricky
because halfway through it becomes about so much more than figuring out who the
killer is, and everyone’s motivations are so deeply rooted in those themes. It’s
one of those rare cases where the movie was clearly as fun to make as it is to watch,
and halfway through it takes some unexpected turns that make you nearly forget
that you’re watching a murder mystery, but again, explaining how would spoil
the surprise.
Our story begins like so many great stories do: with a murder.
World-renowned novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) was found dead in
his mansion the day after his 85th birthday from a slit throat.
While the police are ready to write it off as suicide, the anonymously hired private
detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) isn’t satisfied and pushes the investigation
onward. While Harlan was beloved by his family, many of them had good reason to
want him dead. His son-in-law Richard (Don Johnson) was blackmailed for
cheating on his wife Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), his daughter-in-law Joni (Toni
Collette) was cut off financially after she was caught double dipping into her
daughter’s college tuition, his son Walt (Michael Shannon) was fired from his
job as his publisher for trying to sell the TV/film rights to his work against
his wishes, and Richard and Linda’s son Ransom (Chris Evans), the black sheep
of the family, just wants to see them all burn. And then there’s Harlan’s poor nurse Marta (Ana De Armas); the
last person to see him alive, the only one he truly trusted, who suddenly and
unexpectedly finds herself the sole inheritor of his vast fortune.
On the surface, Knives Out has all the window
dressings of an old-school Agatha Christie style whodunnit murder mystery: A
murder most foul, a rogue’s gallery of suspects with ulterior motives, an
eccentric detective tasked with figuring out who among them is the killer,
thrilling chases, red herrings, conspiracies, a climax where the detective walks
us through his thought process before revealing the perpetrator, the whole
shebang. That’s all to be expected when you walk into a movie like this. But
this was written and directed by Rian Johnson, whose knack making archetypical
genre faire with one slight altercation that takes it off the beaten path has
earned him both praise and scorn, whether it be a film noire set in a high
school with Brick, a time travel movie where the main character is
trying to prevent his future self from murder in Looper, or The
Last Jedi asking if the failures of the Jedi were responsible for the
rise of the First Order. The curveball Knives Out throws at us is that it
takes the Columbo approach, where the audience learns the truth before
the characters do, so we’re actually watching to see how they piece it all
together. That, and halfway through the movie becomes more about the fallout of
the crime than the crime itself.
About halfway through, the focus shifts to Marta, who finds
herself the heir of her old patient’s fortune and at the mercy of a pit of
vipers who felt they were robbed of what was rightfully theirs. With Marta
being a nurse caring for her undocumented immigrant mother who’s so pure of
heart that she can’t even lie without feeling sick (something both Detective
Blanc and the movie milk for all its worth) and the Thrombey clan mostly being
a group of preening, narcissistic one-percenters who treat her like family (even
though they can’t agree on what country she’s from) up until she gets in the
way of the wealth they’ve been living fat off of, it’s pretty easy to draw
withering social critique of the two-faced manner White America deals with immigrants.
The cast is clearly having a blast hamming it up as these
various caricatures of the wealthy elite. Chris Evans especially takes this to
completely upend the Captain America persona he’s built his career around this
past decade by playing his complete opposite: a smug trust-fund playboy who
hates his family as much as they hate him, and would love nothing more than to
watch them all burn. You know upfront that’s he’s a bastard, the only question
being how much of a bastard he truly is. Daniel Craig on the other hand,
donning a southern drawl similar to the one he donned in Logan
Lucky, is relishing the chance to play a super sleuth of a different
flavor than the Bond character he’s been playing for the past thirteen years,
even though he’s not entirely sure who summoned him and his methods of finding
the truth are a bit unconventional, such as making Marta the unwitting Watson
to his Holmes. De Armas gives diligence to Marta as the moral, conscious and
emotional center to this story, bringing the same bright-eyed tenderness that
she brought to Blade
Runner 2049. While it would be easy to write her off as a stereotypically
pure-hearted good girl, the movie wouldn’t work as well without her presence.
Bottom line, Knives Out is a devilishly clever
whodunit that both subverts and celebrates the genre. By exploring the greater
stakes beyond finding the culprit, Rian Johnson turns the genre inside out and
rearranges the mechanics into something new yet still familiar, but is ultimately
a testament to the triumph of decency in the face of moral failure, something
that’s carried through all the way to the movie’s brilliant final shot.
8/10
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