Directed by: Rian Johnson
Starring: Ana de Armas, Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis
Rated PG-13, 130 minutes
Moviegoers who enjoyed this summer’s quirky horror flick “Ready or Not” will be happy to know that, only a few months later, that movie’s spiritual descendant has already arrived. “Knives Out,” from writer-director Rian Johnson (“Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi”), contains many of the same elements—an extraordinarily wealthy family, their beautiful but creepy mansion, an outsider defending herself against the family’s money and prejudice, a heavy focus on games and playfulness—but replaces the horror with a whodunit. Hey, formulas work, even if they don’t leave a lasting impression.
To be fair, plenty about “Knives Out” does leave an impression. For starters, the cast is one of the decade’s best on paper outside of the “Avengers” franchise. The movie not only gives us a universe where Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, and Toni Collette are family—and Christopher Plummer their patriarch—but it does so convincingly, with scathing wit and memorable characters. Assembled together, as they are periodically throughout the movie, the cast soars, each player pushing the others into a frenzy; collectively, they surely enter the canon of great cinematic dysfunctional families.
The movie also boasts abundant stylistic flair, from the macabre set pieces to the mix of cobwebby strings and pop music in the soundtrack. But “Knives Out” is the rare movie whose greatest attention is paid toward its props. Like a board game with a bevy of small pieces, the movie hinges on objects and the ways they’re used: syringes and vials, letters and envelopes, coffee mugs, secret compartments, trick windows—and yes, knives. It’s a crafty and unusually tangible way to design a movie, but Rian Johnson never gets lost in the shuffle. He lets these crucial items take their time to naturally reveal their significance, whether they pay off right away or wait quietly for their turn in the spotlight.
That leaves the actual mystery of “Knives Out,” a clever and tricky plot, if an unremarkable one. A rich old man has died—in this case, the crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Plummer)—on the night of his birthday party. A private detective, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, “Skyfall”), arrives on the scene to interrogate the family until their individual motives are revealed, but Blanc fixates on the dead man’s caretaker, Marta (Ana de Armas, “Blade Runner 2049”), whose great capital-Q Quirk is that she cannot lie without vomiting. Using her as a Watson to his Holmes, and manipulating her regurgitative tendencies to confirm his theories, Blanc slowly teases out the foul play behind Harlan’s death.
But Benoit Blanc is no Sherlock Holmes, even if the movie offers several explicit nods toward the detective of Baker Street. Nor, for that matter, is Blanc to be confused with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, or even the manic Wadsworth of 1985’s “Clue” (another whodunit referenced here). Daniel Craig is certainly entertaining, the fathomless pitch of his voice well suited to his imitation-Southern accent, his pensive gazes fulfilling the archetypal image of the private eye. But these same qualities make Blanc formless, a shadow of greater sleuths that have come before him. Even the brief glimpse we get in one scene of a Spanish-dubbed Angela Lansbury in “Murder, She Wrote” commands more respect. In relying on old clichés of the whodunit and nods to the giants of the genre, Rian Johnson does himself a disservice, coming across as a fan with little more to offer than homage.
“Knives Out” is still fun, but it’s a shame that it can’t quite capitalize on its own strengths. It boasts a terrific ensemble cast, but we only get to see them together in short spurts, spending most of our time alone with Marta and Blanc; the plot is complicated and ever-changing, but the final revelations that answer our questions feel less like the surprise ending you want from a whodunit and more like a logistical chore. What could have been a simple genre flick buoyed by its cast and attention to detail instead feels like a great ensemble satire saddled with obligations to a manufactured plot. Formulaic stories can work, but they depend on cooperation from the rest of the production; “Knives Out” feels like an uncooperative beast rattling the bars of its cage, begging to be let loose.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 12/13/19.