Knives Out (2019)
Genre-hopping writer-director Rian Johnson has done a neo-noir teen flick in Brick, a family crime dramedy in The Brothers Bloom, a twisty time-travel sci-fi excursion in Looper. More famously, he also ushered in the most divisive Star Wars flick ever to come out, The Last Jedi, which, love it or hate it, did explore dimensions of the franchise few else would have explored. A lifelong lover of Agatha Christie novels, Johnson writes and directs this passion project (he originally conceived of the idea after making Brick) that had to wait until he had enough clout in the industry to pull off. The result, Knives Out, is an old-fashioned, star-studded murder mystery with all of the humor, cleverness, and panache you’ve come to expect from the chance-taking writer-director.
Set somewhere in New England (the shoot took place primarily in Massachusetts), the plot involves the death of the patriarch of the Thrombey family, Harlan (Christopher Plummer). Harlan is a wildly successful mystery novelist who has amassed a small fortune running a publishing company for his and other books. While initially thought to be suicide, several guests at Harlan’s 85th birthday acted quite suspiciously before his death that leaves open the possibility of foul play. Along with the police, an unknown person hires a famous detective named Benoit Blanc to check into the matter beyond the standard police questioning. Our main conduit into the story, however, is Marta, Harlan’s nurse that has a strange affliction where she will toss her cookies whenever she lies, making her an instant way to vet the truth, provided that she knows it. With Marta by his side, Blanc finds there may be more to the suicide than he initially thought, though the hows and whys remain elusive.
Just about everyone’s a suspect, all of whom are shown to have motives early on as to why the suicide isn’t a murder. As a mystery, perhaps it doesn’t give enough clues to properly give audiences a decent chance at putting it all together before reveals occur, and some of those reveals may seem predictable even within the limited pieces it doles out. However, it still does manage to arrest the attention as they come out nonetheless. Johnson makes a conscious decision to let the audience off the hook in the second act and sit back and enjoy the ride, not worry about feeling they need to look at the minutia to figure out the real culprit. We aren’t given enough pieces to the very convoluted puzzle to see the full picture until the end, so we can enjoy the characters and the peculiar world they inhabit as a spectator rather than a participant. If the film works, it’s due to the Hitchcockian plotline where we care about the central character and in seeing if she can prevail in the end; who did the deed and why is a secondary concern to the potential payoff after coming to know and care for certain characters.
For inspiration, Johnson here is drawing from a host of classic film whodunits. He starts by pulling in a sizeable star-studded cast that is entirely in keeping with many of the Agatha Christie flicks that were so popular in the 1960s through the early 1980s before the mystery genre became a staple of television shows, it seemed to dry up demand on the big screen. Those character-driven films had a sense of fun, adventure, and humor without becoming self-parody, which is what Johnson’s film attempts to capture for modern audiences. 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express showed that the genre still had legs to the tune of over $350 million in worldwide dollars, so perhaps the time is right for a resurgence. Christie isn’t the only inspiration, as the mystery writer’s many mannequins evoke memories of Sleuth (as well as the tricky interior design, complete with secret entrances and hidden staircases), while “Murder She Wrote” appears briefly on a television screen. Even a famous mystery board game gets a nod when one of the characters calls the Thrombey mansion described as designed like a “Clue” board.
Even within the confines of an old-fashioned mystery yarn, it is a very modern film (most whodunits tend to be period pieces because they’re adaptations of older novels) with themes seemingly ripped from today’s headlines. Coming out on Thanksgiving weekend, it’s the kind of thing that will spark that political argument that most dysfunctional families dread at their gatherings between the progressive side and those who are true believers in the current president’s agenda. The main unexpected throughline comes from the notions of immigration and class in Trump’s America, putting Marta as the daughter of an undocumented immigrant, allowing her to become a potential blackmail victim.
Children of wealth feel entitled despite never working honest jobs in their lives, wanting to close the gate of opportunity to others once they are inside. These lazy elites view immigrants in their employ as of a lesser class. They are undeserving of wealth, despite working hard all of their lives and being called “one of the family.” If there’s one thing we learn by the end of the film, it’s that the corruption of one’s character is as likely to occur among the rich and privileged than the poor and penniless. Harlan is disappointed that the wealth he has amassed has made his children, their spouses, and their offspring, contemptible. Their status has not only made them dependent on him for their continued luxury, but it’s a luxury they feel they deserve for being born or married into wealth and privilege alone. They have no compulsion on lying, cheating, stealing, perhaps even murdering, to get what they feel they are entitled to due to their inherited social status.
The mystery genre, in general, lends to such dichotomies, where the affluent families and their staff are all part of the reasons why a murder might take place. So long as they know their place in the social structure, they are accepted. Still, once that barrier ceases to exist – i.e., once the playing field of opportunity is genuinely even – that’s when the temper among polite well-to-do society gets raised. Once a family is wealthy, they believe they’ve earned their place in life through hard work. These individuals go about lecturing others of lower berth that they can gain the right to be like them if they ‘work hard’ despite their children living off the fruits of their patriarch’s labor without having to work an honest day in their lives.
English actor Daniel Craig might seem at first an odd choice to play the Southern gent who just so happens to be one of the country’s most well-known detectives. He’s done Southern accents before, most notably in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, where he seems to enjoy spreading out his acting wings. Still, here, Craig is entirely in his element as a character actor rather than a hunky leading man. But few people saw that film in the theaters, and this is his second chance to show the world he is an outstanding actor with a great deal of range to play character-based comedy. The Southern drawl gives him a contrast to the family, making him a fish-out-of-water, but one who can observe them with an outsider’s eye that is critical in figuring out who might be in the right or wrong. One gathers he might enjoy playing this particular role another time or two on the big screen now that he’s grown weary of playing James Bond into his 50s.
Once Rian Johnson secured Craig for the role, the rest fell into place, as many other actors want to work with him, especially with a juicy premise and a capable director at the helm. He wanted not only known actors for the roles but ones who are so good at characters that you instantly are engaged and intrigued by them despite none of them getting much screen time. The one giving less of a caricature is the main protagonist and last person to see Harlan alive, Marta, with Ana de Armas playing things mostly straight, with normalcy to contrast the snooty well-to-do types around her. Though inside the house and embraced somewhat by the family, she is, like Benoit, a fish-out-of-water. She may be physically present among them, yet there remains a social barrier between them that keeps her also on the outside looking in.
After a slow start, Johnson’s film grows increasingly absorbing once introductions are out of the way, and people begin to get implicated in a potential murder. The generated tension is enough to be forgiving of the somewhat lengthy narrative and a climax of reveals that goes on quite a bit longer than you may be accustomed to seeing in a mystery. Perhaps it’s ironic that, as a whodunit, it won’t offer much in terms of surprises. Still, as a suspense vehicle, there is more than enough to keep eyes riveted in how things will unravel for such a kooky cast of characters, all played with impeccable gusto by a terrific ensemble of actors. If this sounds like it might be up your alley, you should take a stab at seeing Knives Out.
Qwipster’s rating: B+
MPAA Rated: PG-13 for thematic elements including brief violence, some strong language, sexual references, and drug material
Running Time: 130 min.
Cast: Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon, Christopher Plummer, LaKeith Stanfield, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Edi Patterson, Frank Oz, M. Emmet Walsh
Cameo: Joseph Gordon Levitt (voice)
Director: Rian Johnson
Screenplay: Rian Johnson