Knives Out Review
When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan's dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan's untimely death.
PG13: for thematic elements including brief violence, some strong language, sexual references, and drug material.
Studios: Lionsgate, Media Rights Capital
Runtime: 2 Hours and 10 Minutes
Writer/Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Lakeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Christopher Plummer
It seems as if writer/director Rian Johnson is crossing off a personal checklist of distinguishable genres that he challenges himself to tackle. Johnson might be one of the only filmmakers with the kind of versatility where each of his features are vastly different from one another in style, tone, and genre. This man has done capers, sci-fi action, neo-noirs, and Star Wars. Now, he has revived an old school sub-genre that is extremely rare today: the whodunnit murder mystery. Besides that recent Adam Sandler Netflix murder/mystery/comedy Murder Mystery (wooo redundancy), these films are once-in-a-blue-moon features that aren’t really made anymore. When they are, the tone is often too serious and dark. Fortunately, Johnson has constructed a tightly-written, eccentrically energetic, and brilliantly-crafted murder/mystery/comedy that rejuvenates the genre as one of the best movies of this year.
Famed mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is ironically found dead at his estate on the morning after his 85th birthday. The local cops dismiss it as a suicide after interviewing the dysfunctional, self-absorbed, and rigorously eccentric Thrombey family who would rather spend time clawing at each other’s throats in order to figure out who’s taking over their patriarch’s inheritance and the staff — especially Marta, Harlan’s nurse whom he shared a close relationship with. This is until Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) appears from the shadows, revealing that he was enlisted to investigate the case from a client whom he does not know.
How could one not start off this review without discussing the ensemble. Just look at that cast list! It's so extensive and every single performer is fantastic. While they're all chewing up the scenery with their distinctive quirks, this is truly Ana de Armas’s show. The central focus is on her character and she brings home the bacon with her performance. In my opinion, 2019 did a major disservice to her. Remember when she appeared in the trailer for Danny Boyle’s Yesterday but was left out of the final cut of the movie? She supposedly had a larger role, but she was completely absent in the theatrical release. No worries though, because Johnson puts her front and center amongst this large cast and allows her to showcase the many talents she has to offer. We follow the narrative through her perspective and this is her first comedic role, which she nails phenomenally. She's literally the only good-natured person out of everyone, making you root for her all the way through.
For someone who has specialized strongly in the sci-fi genre, Rian Johnson has a knack for comedy. Knowing how to hit his audience with hilarious lines of dialogue and how he displays the different personalities through their interactions or individual moments are the factors to the energy that have you giggling from beginning to end. Even his expressive shot composition will match the timing of a hilarious joke. He doesn't linger on an actor's reactionary shot for humor as he lets everyone involved in the investigation share the limelight. Even from a filmmaker’s standpoint, in the midst of the comedy Johnson still manages to make it a classic genre film through his playfulness with lighting, having characters appear in shadowy backgrounds with a little bit of light to hint at their personal shady ulterior motives. I just took a class where we discussed Orson Welles’s usage of shadows in The Magnificent Ambersons and Johnson effectively pulls it off in the same vein with his terrible Thrombeys.
Seriously, every single person in the Thrombey family is a complete asshole. They all have their own distinguishable personalities, but they're assholes nonetheless. They're all self-righteous, selfish, anything else that begins with “self”, rich white people who built their own bases from nepotism. When their livelihoods are at stake, you witness this fun slow burn of a family drama come into fruition and god, it's such good tea. Plus, while terrible, they are engrossingly hilarious as both a dysfunctional unit and on their own individual levels.
Johnson perfectly uses each cast member to his advantage without having them go completely over the top. While many of them are silly and playing different absurd character types, they're all on the same playing field, for Johnson isn't overly reliant on their quirks. He makes sure his story is still moving and hitting the narrative beats it needs to. His razor sharp original screenplay is full of hilariously quotable dialogue and running gags. Meticulously planted foreshadowing comes first and foremost and it becomes a thrilling roller coaster ride from start to finish. Besides the script being so funny and well-crafted, Johnson adds a refreshing new take on the genre by deconstructing the structural format of a mystery and reshuffling the narrative elements, all while paying tribute to it. With the story set through Marta’s perspective as she goes on her own hilarious yet poignant journey of coming to her own mixed with overlying clashing she has with the Thrombey family regarding Harlan, Johnson intricately incorporates relevant themes of American greed and how nepotism doesn't hold a candle to hard-earned success in the midst of all the twists and turns of an inspired mystery.
To go off on a bit of a tangent, I love how Daniel Craig has recently been selling himself as a more ranged performer outside of James Bond to rival his wife Rachel Weisz. It's as if when he saw The Favourite, Craig said, “Oh, you don’t think I can get silly because she can get silly? Watch me get silly!” His portrayal of this Colonel Sanders-dialected detective with a rather French name is a great continuation of his comedic talents after his performance in Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky. His character is to be Johnson’s own personal rendition of Christie’s Hercule Poirot mixed with Inspector Clouseau. Whenever he's onscreen, you can't help but laugh out loud at his voice and his ongoing frustrations his character faces with his mysterious hiring. Plus given the new impressionable dialect he delivers, I can think of a few voice roles that he can, I say, he can play:
2019 has given us several movies that either dipped their feet into the campiness of their genre but never went full camp (Ready or Not) or dove headfirst into full camp without tying together a thread of a proactive narrative (Velvet Buzzsaw). Knives Out goes full camp, but it’s also meticulously balanced by a heavyweight champion of an original screenplay and classic filmmaking techniques that leave you in awe and nostalgic, wanting more films in the classic Hollywood vein that just aren't made anymore. After a long and disappointing year from Hollywood studio movies, Knives Out is an original breath of fresh air that reminds you that originality is not dead and defines the needed nostalgia for classic movie-going experiences. I haven't had this much fun watching a movie in such a loooooooooong time. From the performances to the tight-laced script and the inspired vision, this contemporary genre piece is a timeless classic that I can't get enough of. Undoubtedly, Knives Out is one of the year’s best original films, if not one of the best studio movies of the year.
Rating: 4.5/5 | 94%
P.S: I honestly wouldn’t say this, unless I meant it but, please Rian Johnson, please make a sequel to this. Congratulations Lionsgate, you have opened the door to another badass franchise next to the high caliber of your John Wick.
