Knives Out: Mystery Cinema At Its Absolute Finest

It’s a big week for Tuesdays with Cory, as we have a legitimate scoop: I’m actually going to be talking about a movie that hasn’t yet seen a wide theater release.  Knives Out is writer-director Rian Johnson‘s (Brick, Looper) first foray onto the silver screen since his divisive stab at Star Wars: The Last Jedi (which, for the record, I was not the biggest fan of), and what I have to report after my viewing is that it finds him at what must surely be the height of his talent.  If you’re not familiar with the film – which will be released in theaters tomorrow, November 27th – it’s framed as a classic whodunit, which is something that isn’t seen so much these days, perhaps owing to the difficulty of writing a convincing and audience-fooling mystery.  To set the stage for you, the reader: eighty-five year old murder mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey has passed away from suspected suicide on the night of his birthday party, for which his entire family was in attendance, and the actual nature of his death – along with the fate of his enormous inheritance – hangs in the balance.  It sounds more like the exposition for an escape room than for a captivating movie, but bear with me and I’ll be sure to avoid any spoilers.

Come on down to Thrombey Town, which is basically just a really cool mansion that’s frankly the perfect setting for a murder mystery, even if in that aspect the movie basically copies Clue.

What Knives Out consistently does best is what any whodunit worth its salt should do: it prides itself on misdirection, leading even its cagiest audience members to believe the exact opposite of what’s true on multiple occasions.  I too foolishly considered myself to be on the inside track quite early on in the viewing, even going so far as to share my theory with my girlfriend, only to be completely bamboozled by the film’s hurried but marvelous conclusion.  This is a beautiful thing – Johnson knows that’s there’s immense joy to be taken both in feeling like you’ve outsmarted the movie and in later being yourself outsmarted.  No line or shot is unimportant, no narrative stone is left unturned, and extreme care is taken in making sure – as Daniel Craig‘s Benoit Blanc so eloquently expresses it – that a donut hole is found for every existing donut.  What he has woven together using what can only be described as an outstanding cast of very dislikable characters, all of them with motives, will leave you wondering how anyone including Johnson could have sat down in front of a keyboard and made it happen, either via having the ideas for the central plot laid out beforehand or by finding them along the way.

Benoit Blanc wondering if that profile in The New Yorker was worth all this fuss.

And much of it is of course propelled by a more than capable ensemble, led by the ever-affable KFC-edition of Hercule Poirot, the similarly named Benoit Blanc, brought to life by James Bond himself, Daniel Craig.  Craig’s Holmesian deduction combined with the Savannah-delivered acerbic wit certainly make him a compelling protagonist, though it could be argued that Ana de Armas‘ Marta Cabrera – the deceased’s nurse, whose country of origin is comically and repeatedly misplaced by the aristocratic Thrombey family’s various members – is the film’s true main subject.  There’s then the veritable gallery of rogues that make up said Thrombey family, with Jamie Lee Curtis playing Harlan’s power-suited daughter Linda, Toni Collette playing lifestyle guru daughter-in-law Joni, Michael Shannon as Walt, the supposed heir of the publishing empire, and Chris Evans, playing Harlan’s grandson and generally ne’er do well playboy, readily described by others as the “black sheep” of the family.  Sprinkled in are a number of near-cameo-level performances from Lakeith Stanfield as Benoit’s fellow investigator, Jaeden Martell as a white supremacist teenager, Katherine Langford as a SJW (the film’s description, not mine), and Christopher Plummer as the bygone mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey himself.

The Thrombeys: a rich and dysfunctional family, with all members considering themselves “self-made” in spite of the fact that the majority of them plainly aren’t.

An additional component worth mentioning that’s slathered on top of Knives Out‘s constant dose of intrigue is its sense of humor.  I’ve already mentioned the country-of-origin gag, which was one of the better repeated jokes of the movie, but there’s plenty of opportunity throughout for the film’s cast to flex its comedic muscle, with one of the goofier plot points – a suspect whose physical reaction to lying is so visceral that it causes her to literally vomit – delivering good chuckles along the way.  Even discarding such bodily humor, the range of characters featured in Knives Out‘s story is for the most part cartoonish to a fault, allowing for a number of barbed insults to land and for them to draw raucous laughter considering how reprehensible their subjects commonly are.  Also worth noting is the film’s artful use of comedy in suspenseful, oftentimes pivotal sequences where it’s quite unexpected: one such example is a car chase in which the lead vehicle – the one evading the authorities – is seemingly unable to top 80 MPH.  It’s a tad slapstick-y, but there’s no doubt that it works.  Even if Knives Out is a film that contains a moral compass, or even a slight political leaning – and a subtle ambition to impart both upon its audience, or at least beg questions surrounding such things – its penchant for laughs is maybe what’s most emblematic of its true calling: good old-fashioned popcorn entertainment.

Chris Evans wearing a designer scarf and eating fancy cookies while eschewing police questions is a vibe and a half.

Knives Out is an emulation of Agatha Christie with a conclusion that’s lightyears more satisfying than that of her Murder on the Orient Express, and while it’s hard to make a claim for it as high drama or award-worthy cinema, it turned out to be one of my favorite movie experiences of the year and remains thrilling and high-speed fun throughout, as evinced by the fact that my girlfriend confessed to having to go to the bathroom halfway through but never finding the chance to (“It never slowed down!”, she said).  With a PG-13 rating and with something to offer to perhaps all potential audience members, it’s an excellent candidate for Thanksgiving weekend family fare in addition to the leftover turkey.