Knives Out (2019, Dir. Ryan Johnson):
A creaky, sinister family mansion. The millionaire head of said family (and a famed mystery writer to boot) dead under suspicious circumstances. A cast of suspects brimming with secrets and motives. An eccentric detective bent on uncovering the truth. Knives Out has a classic setup for a whodunit all right; it’s even spelled out in black and white in the film’s ad campaign: “A Rian Johnson Whodunit.”
Still, anyone familiar with Johnson’s work as a writer/director might be suspicious about that claim. Subverting expectations at every turn — just check out the polarized reactions to his previous project, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi — Johnson is known as a hip prankster who can’t resist messing with every genre he touches, sometimes just for the fun of messing around. How appropriate, then, that Knives Out, his contribution to that most artificial and hidebound of genres, the locked-room mystery, turns out to be his most straightforward film to date.
Knives Out‘s opening moments — an ominous long shot of the aforementioned mansion accented by a stinging string quartet on the soundtrack, random views of eerie figurines and bric-a-brac inside — suggest we’re in for a chilling Gothic tale, but we quickly settle in for something that’s more of a lark. Like the good old days of mystery blockbusters with all-star casts (even the term “all-star cast” seems quaint now), the film quickly announces a victim and trots out its lineup of would-be murderers. In brief, it seems that renowned curmudgeon Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) slit his own throat on his 85th birthday, but as a police lieutenant (LaKeith Stanfield) and state trooper (Noah Segan) conduct a routine inquiry, it becomes apparent that there’s something more behind the pained, brave smiles of Harlan’s bereaved clan than just plain grief. And who’s that shadowy figure lounging behind the policemen, plinking at a piano every time someone says something patently false?
That man of mystery turns out to be Knives Out‘s first central figure: Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a country-fried gentleman detective recently profiled in the pages of The New Yorker. Like a Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, Benoit is the kind of flamboyant sleuth built for numerous installments, and Craig, sharp and shambling, funneling every insinuation and observation through a Foghorn Leghorn accent, is clearly having a blast in the role. Good thing too, because the first act of Knives Out is a bit sleepy. Mainly we’re fed hunks of rote interrogation, Johnson’s camera getting up close and uncomfortably personal with his actors while they squirm. Some audience members might grow impatient during this stretch: Yes, we know these people are lying. Get to crime-solving already!
Thankfully, the real star of the show soon takes center stage: Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s faithful nurse. A good-hearted South American immigrant, she immediately elicits our sympathy as the only proletariat amongst this snotty bourgeois crowd. She also happens to be afflicted with a condition that prevents her from lying; any fibs trigger a bout of barfing, which Johnson decorously refuses to linger on (except for a key moment during the finale). de Armas turns out to be the fulcrum of the movie, as it is quickly revealed to the audience that she knows, or believes she knows, what went down the night of Harlan’s death. Not only that, she has very good reasons for not divulging what happened, an undocumented immigrant mother among them.
And just like that, we’re off and running, as Marta tries to cover her tracks even as she’s co-opted by Blanc as a compadre and truth detector. (“The game’s afoot, eh, Watson?” he jokes.) The outline of Knives Out may resemble an Agatha Christie puzzler, but the way the plot reformulates itself on the fly around its protagonists is more reminiscent of Anthony Shaffer’s similarly brainy Sleuth (a malevolent sailor dummy on display in Thrombey’s mansion is ripped straight from Sleuth‘s set). A cameo appearance by Frank Oz, the director of the confidence scam classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, also hints that not everything is as it appears.
Make no mistake, Knives Out bears all its creator’s earmarks. Literary and cinematic Easter eggs mix with snarky put-downs, the prevailing mood one of laid-back fun rather than vicious malevolence. At one moment Thomas Pynchon is name-dropped, and in the next the case is compared to a donut with a filled-in center (which has another hole inside it, naturally). But for the most part, Johnson affectionately honors the conventions of the genre, throwing in the expected curveballs: unreliable witnesses, dazzling deductions, and a final-act reveal of the killer in that classic location where criminals tend to be unmasked — a posh library. (“The guy practically lived in a Clue board,” mutters the ever-skeptical Stanfield.) Likewise, Johnson’s directorial flourishes are low-key: a nifty bit of framing here, a gag delivered in deadpan style there. Nothing momentous is at stake, which comes as a relief after The Last Jedi, where he seemed a bit overwhelmed by the scope of the enterprise.
Blanc: I anticipate the terminus of Gravity’s Rainbow.
Marta Cabrera: Gravity’s Rainbow.
Benoit Blanc: It’s a novel.
Marta Cabrera: Yeah, I know. I haven’t read it though.
Benoit Blanc: Neither have I. Nobody has. But I like the title.
Orbiting around Craig and de Armas, the supporting actors don’t have much to do, but they happily chow down on the scenery when given the chance. Jamie Lee Curtis goes clipped and brittle, Michael Shannon wheedles and whines away, and Toni Collette is positively gargoylish as a schemer who hides behind Valley Girl dialect and New-Age aphorisms. On the other side of the political spectrum, Don Johnson pokes fun at his smirking-smoothie image, playing Curtis’s philandering MAGA husband. Best of the lot is Chris Evans, who livens up the movie’s latter half as a trust-fund jerk. After a decade as Captain America, it’s easy to forget that Evans made his bones playing cocky smart-asses, and he gleefully makes up for lost time here, somehow remaining likable against all odds. As these odious relatives bicker away, conservative Nazis and liberal snowflakes alike, Johnson uses the opportunity for barbed observations on our current national climate. Communicating only via insults, these twits are too wrapped up in themselves to even remember Marta’s country of origin. (They refer to her condescendingly as “the help” when they’re not using her as a pawn in their arguments for or against their political stances.)
When answers finally arrive in Knives Out, they’re clever enough to satisfy most mystery aficionados, but for once, Johnson’s sleights of hand aren’t really the point. What does matter is his two protagonists: Craig, courtly, daffy and humane, his impossibly blue eyes bugging out every time he’s blindsided by a plot twist, and de Armas, stricken and vulnerable, the story’s beating heart. Knives Out might satisfy as a frothy throwaway, but ultimately it reveals itself to be a commentary about the haves and the have-nots, with a Rodney King-esque plea for all of us to get along thrown in for good measure. In this season of giving, it’s an unexpectedly generous sentiment, with nary a touch of snark in sight, and it adds a touch of humanity to an otherwise well-oiled mystery machine. Who said that pranksters don’t have hearts, after all? ■
