Review: Rian Johnson Delivers a Grand Whodunnit with ‘Knives Out’
We are two years removed from Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, a film that caused a cataclysmic divide in Star Wars fandom unlike anything seen since the prequels. The discourse was, to say the least, unbearable, and in the wake of it, with blank check in tow, Johnson created something much smaller in scale and something entirely original so the nerds don’t riot: Knives Out.
Dipping from the whodunnit well, Johnson drank in the spirits of Clue, Agatha Christie, and Murder by Death and poured out onto the page a grand mystery of greed and murder where everyone is a suspect and every clue takes on a suspicious importance, feeding into your hunch until a new clue is uncovered and making you guess who the murderer is until the final moments. Built on a crack script with a stellar cast to deliver it, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is an unfettered riot that is impossible to deny. Where his last film caused a rift, it’s hard to think this will do anything but delight.
On the night of his 85th birthday, writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) kills himself. Or so was presumed. Given a mysterious sum of money to investigate his death, Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) interviews members of the family one by one. With conflicting alibis and ulterior motives abound, Blanc suspects foul play, turning everyone into a suspect and launching us into our two hour whodunnit adventure.
Let’s clear the table first because it will be the first thing you identify: the cast is great. Because of the nature of whodunnits, characters are put on equal footing, given their own motives, and imbued with a definable characteristic. Fortunately for us, that is no different here.
Whether that be Daniel Craig portraying a detective inquisitively assessing the scene like Hercule Poirot to the tune of a southern drawl, or Chris Evans playing a spoiled line-heir to the Thrombey fortune with an aloof arrogance, or Toni Collette playing a married-into-the-family beneficiary who is literally a spoof on Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop business, everyone is playing a part that drives the mystery. Throw in additional roles from Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Lakeith Stanfield, and Don Johnson, and you have a gallery of potential murderers for you to assess and craft your own theories around. It’s just a great cast who deliver great character performances and you can’t leave the theater without remembering who they played or how Chris Evans tells everyone to ‘eat shit.’
In the middle of all this is a $60 million fortune. While the death of their enriched relative is still fresh on everyone’s mind, the next immediate issue is who will get Harlan's money, turning everyone in a ravenous gold digger laying claim to their assumed birth right. Shades of entitlement and greed come to the surface and come in conflict with one another as one relative throws another under the bus, only to be besmirched by another. It becomes a a dog pile of thirst that makes each and every individual a moral-less vessel of greed with the potential to murder when money is at stake. Consider it commentary-lite on the corruptibility of money and the amoral behavior of the upper class, a nice motivator turned theme that’s subtly placed on top of this murder mystery.
While the cast is working overtime, it is Johnson’s script that is the star of the show. Whodunnits often lack a degree of intelligence or wit to really knock you back in your seat. The maid did it. The smoking gun was in the first act. The culprit was obvious. Those and a litany of other tropes disrupt the aura of mystery for this genre, making for plenty of lame duck mysteries where you’re waiting for the final conclusion just so you can reaffirm your suspicions and you can walk out of the theater with a smug grin of superior intelligence.
Knives Out though is written with mystery in mind. The clues are laced throughout the film and the introduction of new ones have you reevaluating your thoughts as your attention moves from one family member to another. I found myself constantly trying to piece everything together before Blanc could, but the mystery is so well structured that I couldn’t. The crown accomplishment is how the film can put the solution right in front of you and make you say, “Oooooh, how did I not catch that?” when Johnson plays his final hand. It was all right there in front of us, but it was so well hidden we didn’t take notice, and that’s what makes Knives Out so intelligently satisfying.
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