D. C.’s Take: Knives Out

Noth­ing says bring­ing fam­i­lies to­gether than sit­ting down to watch a wealthy fam­ily get at each oth­er's throats in fig­ur­ing out how to han­dle the fact some­one might be a mur­derer. Sounds fun, right? At least that's what to ex­pect from Rian John­son's lat­est “Knives Out.”  

What's the Story: Renowned crime nov­el­ist Har­lan Thrombey (Christo­pher Plum­mer) in­vited his ex­tended but dys­func­tional fam­ily to his man­sion to cel­e­brate his 85th birth­day. Not every­thing turns out well when he is found dead the next day. Not sure how it hap­pened, De­tec­tive Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is en­listed to in­ves­ti­gate to un­cover the truth be­hind the pa­tri­arch's death and won­ders if it's truly a sui­cide or if some­one went out of the way to kill him.  

“Knives Out” was one of my most an­tic­i­pated movies for the rest of the year based solely on John­son be­hind the cam­era and the story. There's al­ways a chance that any­thing he comes out with will surely be amaz­ing, from “Looper” and most re­cently “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” Though I'm not one of those who re­li­giously bashes him for ru­in­ing the fran­chise, be­cause he did­n't, and we should all grow up; it was a good idea for him to take it back to a smaller scale and give us a mur­der mys­tery. Not a lot of them made an im­pres­sive im­pact in Hol­ly­wood in a long time that most peo­ple re­mem­ber. For in­stance, we can cat­e­go­rize the re­make of “Mur­der on the Ori­ent Ex­press” as un­der­whelm­ing. It was ex­cit­ing to learn that an orig­i­nal plot for the genre has ma­jor po­ten­tial to be worth the hype. As I was lucky enough to buy a ticket to see an early screen­ing of it, I tip my hat to Mr. John­son for mak­ing “Knives Out” a blast. 

As one does, craft­ing a crime com­edy of sorts, he took a lot of in­spi­ra­tion from Agatha Christie nov­els and movie adap­ta­tions of her work, along with prob­a­bly watched the guilty plea­sure mys­tery of them all “Clue” and made it his own with­out mak­ing it a joke. The thing that John­son does a great job at es­tab­lish­ing up­front is that we, the au­di­ence, are try­ing to guess what hap­pened and who was cor­rupt of killing Har­lan. Most of the scenes are just char­ac­ters talk­ing, and you're eas­ily in­vest­ing with what's be­ing said to give us con­nec­tions of our own. And then the pres­ence of his smart screen­play is filled some great lines of di­a­logue that's equally funny and times of eas­ing in think­ing some­thing of ten­sion might build-up. 

Craig's per­for­mance as De­tec­tive Blanc was prob­a­bly meant to be over-the-top while car­ry­ing a South­ern ac­cent through the en­tire film, but he pulled it off with­out bat­ting an eye. He's the Her­cule Poirot of this uni­verse, and this was such a fun role that he can play that should­n't be taken se­ri­ously. Over­all, I feel this is one of his best roles out­side Bond. Even af­ter I left the the­ater, I wanted to talk like him for an en­tire week. 

But be­sides Craig, he's also a part of the best en­sem­ble cast of the year. It must have been hard get­ting all these tal­ented peo­ple in­volved. There's Chris Evans, Ana de Ar­mas, Jamie Lee Cur­tis, Don John­son, Michael Shan­non, Toni Col­lette, Lakeith Stan­field, Kather­ine Lang­ford, Jae­den Martell, and, of course, Plum­mer. All of whom were out­stand­ing for act­ing like a dys­func­tional fam­ily that turns on each other in fig­ur­ing out every­thing af­ter this tragedy-stricken upon them. 

From a tech­ni­cal level, this was well-paced for a two-hour-long black com­edy that did­n't feel long, Nathan John­son's score fit­ted the tone through­out the film, the edit­ing was sharp, and the pro­duc­tion de­sign of the man­sion has enough to look around the back­ground to feel the vibe of the scenes. 

By the end of “Knives Out,” it's proof that a di­rec­tor like John­son will never make a dis­ap­point­ing film in my eyes. Made for those who love read­ing nov­els about solv­ing mys­ter­ies and be­ing sur­prised will be pleased with bril­liance. Be­lieve me when I say he crafted a well-told mod­ern take on a who­dunit mys­tery able to be un­pre­dictable, funny, and just plain en­ter­tain­ing. Re-watch­ing it later on and know­ing the out­come might ruin the fun, but there's just a lot to en­joy about one of the best movies 2019 of­fers. 

Grade: A-