Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn
Have I Seen it Before: Sadly, I missed it in the theater, and I feel badly (or perhaps even guilty) about that.
Did I Like It: A viewer goes into Knives Out (2019) knowing that its a whodunit, but even so there’s a certain amount of surprise to the whole affair. Can Johnson pull something like this off? Is Craig able to shake of Bond more than any of his predecessors in the role and slide into character work in his later years?
The answer was yes to both, and the plot of the mystery itself kept one guessing.
There’s no way they could all pull this off again, with a completely different case, no less, right?
Even if Johnson and Craig were able to recapture the charm of the original film, I’m bound to find myself not having any fun at all, as I’m looking around every corner trying to unravel the mystery before Blanc (Craig) can. It’s like I’m sitting in the middle of the fourth season of Sherlock, and I’m into the second hour before I realize I’m not having any fun anymore.
Not so here, I’m happy to report. The larger mystery itself is a misdirect, sure, as some bad faith reviewers are noting with such vehemency that it’s as if the movie stole their lunch money. Honestly, who cares? For my money, that kept things lively, and the comedy that the mayhem and disaster exploding around these characters is entirely self-inflicted so thoroughly encompasses the stupid moment of history we’re all desperately stuck in. Will Glass Onion age as well as Knives Out? Maybe not. A mystery’s shelf life hits a half life pretty quickly after the mystery itself is revealed, so I’m imagining both of these—and any future Blanc adventures—have a better shot than anything else in the genre.