Glass Onion (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

Thank goodness they're back at it. Rian Johnson returns with Daniel Craig for another quick-witted, topical whodunnit to follow up Knives Out. And, befitting a sequel, this one is glossier, flashier, and bigger. The Gothic tendencies of the first are still present, but now in chic modern trappings. The self-aware political dialogue of the first is somehow more trenchant and expansive now. Think of this as like Branagh's new Poirot films: the first was more isolated and spooky, the second was more glamorous and brutal. It helps that Glass Onion takes place on a picturesque private Greek island topped with an enormous glass globe, because murder in paradise is always more fun.

It's the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and a group of old friends gathers for their annual vacation together at the island paradise home of Miles Bron, a billionaire techie and patented idiot played to perfection by Edward Norton, who plays against type to hilarious effect. One wonders if his idiocy has led to paranoia, because the group of friends he amasses are surely close-knit but they each hide devious secrets that only each other knows. They affectionately refer to themselves as "The Disruptors," which reveals their collective narcissism and smug self-righteousness, and their various pursuits smack of shady dealings and ill-gotten gains. Guarding each other's secrets as they do, they might best be described as frenemies.

Much as with the first installment, Johnson both honors and inverts typical whodunnit tropes. Yes, everyone in the large ensemble cast is a suspect, but they're also all deeply conflicted and ambiguous characters. The pool of suspects Johnson treats as a microcosm of social ills: the first film's insular family felt a bit Trumpian in its hyper-fixation on money and entitlement as well as their performative tolerance, and this film's fraternity of friends is more than a little echo chamber-y in its treatment of social media and its condemnation of greedily inspired tech advancements. Johnson also structures his delightfully twisty plot with knowing loops on itself, making it deucedly difficult to predict, much like the first film. Adding in metafictional flair -- such as his numerous gobsmacking cameos from people like Ethan Hawke and the late great duo Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury -- only adds to the festive wackiness and off-the-wall ingenuity.

Daniel Craig leads again as Benoit Blanc (now confirmed to be gay and partnered to Hugh Grant) as the Cajun detective with a mind like a steel trap, although this time he plays more of a character than before. His attention was piqued when he receives an invitation to the Disruptors' vacation: each invitation takes the form of a deviously complex puzzle box Blanc declares to be silly and simple. However, Blanc was more or less recruited by a character played by Janelle Monáe. SPOILER ALERT: it is Monáe who really owns this movie in a dual role of twin sisters determined to bring down Miles for his criminality and dangerous new alternative fuel. And so, Blanc himself is a bit more relaxed and even goofy during the film's first act, which is a memorably blissful change in style for him.

The rest of the cast is uniformly great (including Kate Hudson's model and influencer with a penchant for racist tweets, Dave Bautista men's rights YouTuber, and a surprisingly nuanced Madelyn Cline as his sexed-up girlfriend Whiskey), although I personally felt that Leslie Odom Jr.'s tortured scientist and Kathryn Hahn's shady governor up for a senate election were underused despite being arguably the most dynamic actors of the ensemble. It's nice to see the actors play into or against type intentionally, and I wondered more than once how much of that was intentional to this movie in particular, to tie in with the symbolic ambiguity of its titular structure.

The plot, characters, performances, and themes are all pretty clear, but the layers get more interesting and intricate as they are peeled back. That's the brilliance of Johnson's creation in this series; it's like what Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson did with the Scream franchise in honoring the genre traditions while flipping them on their heads in intelligent and daring ways. Other recent satires like The Menu aren't dissimilar in targeting hot topics with complex, half-joking wit. And Glass Onion takes everything we loved about Knives Out and gives us more of it all, which makes it one of the best movies of the year and a joyous addition to what we can all hope will be a thriving new Netflix series.