In what may well be my most anticipated movie of the year, Rian Johnson has crafted a thoroughly entertaining murder mystery. Wealthy crime novelist and patriarch Harlan Thrombey invited his entire family to his 85th birthday party; the movie begins the next morning when his housekeeper finds him dead. In our age of cynical, satirical, metafictional commentary on genre, Johnson here refuses to let his highly original film exhaust itself in this vein. Rather, he imbues it with so much heart and timely social commentary -- while still keeping up the humor and thrills -- that it never feels predictable or derivative.
I'll do my best not to spoil much of the mystery, but even with some basic knowledge of the plot, it's hard to really predict what will happen. Not because it's a huge secret; quite the opposite, because we know full well whodunnit by the halfway point, and we are also highly suspicious of the villain. What?, I hear you ask, but yes indeed -- the killer and the prime suspect and the villain are all in fact very different people. That is just the first of Johnson's brilliant moves to make his murder mystery unique. Johnson gives Agatha Christie a run for her money here; while I personally prefer Christie's ability to let all her characters shine independently, Johnson here is so invested in his leading character that the others are more an ensemble than distinct personalities.
That said, I think we can safely discuss the characters. They're all delightfully suspicious, and divided into three groups, each headed by one of Thrombey's children. The eldest, Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), is a real estate mogul with a racist husband (Don Johnson) who complains about immigrants before quoting Hamilton and a spoiled playboy-with-a-nihilistic-streak son Ransom (a rather unhinged Chris Evans). The youngest, Walt (Michael Shannon), runs dear old dad's publishing company but can't quite make it on his own, even with the dubious support of his wife Donna (Riki Lindhome) and Nazi-sympathizing Internet troll of a son Jacob (Jaeden Martell). Widow Joni (Toni Collette), daughter-in-law to the patriarch, is a self-help lifestyle guru who self-helps herself through the Thrombey finances with a social activist daughter named Meg (Katherine Langford).
The family almost certainly did the deed, but there's also the housekeeper Fran who sees more than she should. There's old man Thrombey's mother, who is mostly still and silent, and whose age is utterly unknown even to her descendants. And, most importantly, there's the old man's nurse Marta (Ana de Armas), to whom the film primarily belongs. Marta was Harlan's confidant and caregiver, and now she harbors a dark secret but cannot tell lies -- her body is an inevitable lie detector under pain of regurgitation -- and so ends up bound to the investigation into her charge's death. It is her apparent purity and empathy that steals the movie; indeed, it arguably fuels much of the convoluted plot. When private detective Benoit Blanc (a delicious Daniel Craig) with his drawling southern accent enters the scene, he beelines for her and loops her in immediately.
While the whodunnit aspect is initially set up as the driving interest for us, by the halfway point that is no longer the primary mystery; it quickly becomes more of a howdunnit or even a whydunnit, which is what makes Knives Out so endlessly fresh. Sure, its roots are deep in the delicious ensemble murder mystery genre, but it quickly evolves into something else entirely, something that honors its tradition while consistently carving out its own niche. I personally expected more style than the film delivered, but I was pleasantly surprised that the substance far outpaced my expectations. The hows and whys become the dynamic interest, and the denouement is less "Aha!" than "Ohh, wow..." and that is a pretty amazing thing.
But, as a final note, it's the film's social commentary that makes this movie important in 2019. It's got a similar flavor to Get Out or Beatriz at Dinner in that it takes as center focus a young, brown-skinned immigrant woman who has to navigate a greedy, duplicitous white family whose love and acceptance of her turn immediately when their family fortune is at stake. They can't remember what South American country she came from, and don't really care that she's working to help keep her own family safe. By the film's final scene, Johnson lays down his cards with two or three of the best shots in the movie and one of the best closing images we've seen on screen all year. It's hilarious and twisted and utterly delicious, and perfectly captures the attitude of the whole movie.
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