052 REVIEW
Directed by
RIAN JOHNSON
Starring
ANA DE ARMAS
DANIEL CRAIG
CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER
Released
29 NOVEMBER
ANTICIPATION.
This looks like an absolute hoot.
Though there hasn’t been a decent
whodunit in a while.
ENJOYMENT.
Could this be the shortest,
fastest, 130 minute film ever
made?
IN RETROSPECT.
Please get going on the continuing
adventures of Cajun super sleuth
Benoit Blanc.
here is a second hand book shop on
London’s Charring Cross Road and adjacent
to its front door is a shelf – some might call
it a shrine – dedicated to the work of crime writing
doyenne, Agatha Christie. There are, we assume,
shrines just like this in shops and homes across
the entire globe. Your hand moves in one direction,
and before it reaches one of the many, early and
vintage editions, it darts off in another. Where to
begin with this gigantic and gigantically influential
literary corpus?
You could always take the fun option of going to
see Rian Johnson’s sparkling fifth directorial feature,
Knives Out, which is that rare beast: an exacting,
affectionate homage that also delivers thrills, spills
and meaty subtext in its own right. On the docket
we have a big old Gothic stack with a bunch of secret
doors, an obscene cash inheritance, a bitterly feuding
and snobbishly entitled family (Jamie Lee Curtis,
Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Toni
Colette) and their wily but empathetic Latino maid
(Ana de Armas). And then there’s the harsh but fair
patriarch Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer),
a world-famous crime writer who lords over everyone
with his imposing baritone, whose judgement is final
and whose throat is cut with an ornamental dagger.
His merry pranks play out from beyond the grave
as the bereaved relatives claw mercilessly for that
massive, unearned financial windfall.
In the background, and very much maintaining
a tab on all the minute machinations and obscure
motives, is Daniel Craig ’s crackerjack private
detective Benoit Blanc, whose velvety Louisiana drawlaffirms both his outsider status and the film’s firm
commitment to ironic tomfoolery. To explore even
the most superficial of plot details would be futile,
as this is a tale rooted in deep and solid contextual
foundations, where every character has their own
intricate backstory which serves to detain them in the
spotlight of guilt for longer than they want to be there.
But Johnson is not content to reheat and
re-serve the same old hoary genre clichés played
at an arch remove. Instead he opts to shift the
whodunnit goalposts at every opportunity, so at the
point you think you know where all this is headed,
you really don’t. Knives Out is less interested in the
insta-gratification of collaring the culprit than it is
airing out a lot of dirty laundry. The plot whips along
at such a pace you can feel the wind in your face, but
it is also so tight that you never feel the need to even
once glance back. There are small digressions in the
film which ally it with the political now, such as a
veiled argument about Trump and the fact that one
of the younger offspring is an alt-right troll.
Yet de Armas’ kindly Marta finds herself at
the centre of all this murderous squabbling – an
immigrant whose tireless work ethic and righteous
moral roadmap is only noticed by the one man who
isn’t around to protect her. If there’s a criticism,
it’s that the Thrombey clan are all a little one note,
and they are all singularly driven by their forthright
political and economic identities, and thus a little
too predictable for comfort. Still, Johnson just
keeps on pushing until a breathless finale is then
capped off with a closing shot which adds a delicious
final twist of the knife. DAVID JENKINSKnives Out
T