Rian Johnson’s delectable new Knives Out film is a chocolate box: mouthwateringly delicious on the first layer and … well, perfectly tasty on the second. Daniel Craig returns as private detective Benoit Blanc, in a slightly more serious mode than before, with not as many droll suth’n phrases and quirky faux-naif mannerisms, but rocking a longer hairstyle and handsomely tailored three-piece suit.
Blanc arrives at a Catholic church in upstate New York to investigate the sensational murder of its presiding priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, a ferocious clerical alpha male played by Josh Brolin, thundering his reactionary views from the pulpit. (That “Monsignor” title can only be bestowed by the pope incidentally: presumably Benedict XVI or John Paul II, not milksop liberals like Francis or Leo XIV.) And prime suspect is the sweet-natured, thoughtful junior priest Father Jud Duplenticy, amusingly played by Josh O’Connor, who was upset by the Monsignor’s heartless attitudes and was caught on video threatening to cut him out of the church like a cancer. Atheist Blanc faces off with the young priest, a worldview culture-clash which leads to an extraordinary encounter with the Resurrection itself.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Mgr Wicks was adored by a close-knit group of cranky and troubled parishioners, a hilariously cartoony lineup with a few resemblances to personae from the first Knives Out film. Wheelchair-using cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny) is stricken with illness like Jacqueline du Pré; failing sci-fi novelist Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) is trying to convert his interminable Substack into a masterpiece; Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) is a lawyer whose stepson Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack) is a Trumpian influencer; Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner) is a doctor losing his battle with the bottle; and church housekeeper Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) is fiercely loyal to the Monsignor and is in turn adored by the groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church). By the end, there’s a motive for each.
It is an absolutely sparkling array of acting talent, with everyone at the top of their game, and Johnson teases us with references to many “locked room” detective mysteries, including those by John Dickson Carr, Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie; classic texts whose playful purpose here is probably to divert and mislead. As with the previous two Knives Out films, the enjoyment is, for me, most intense before the actual murder itself, when we see the characters joust and spark unencumbered by murder and suspicion. There are hilarious scenes when Mgr Wicks insists that poor Jud hears his confession, which turns out to be a upsettingly detailed litany of masturbation episodes. Jud’s own confession is a stunningly effective counterblast.
Then we get the murder, and then … well, it’s still thoroughly enjoyable, but should probably be considered more of a deadpan-absurdist ensemble comedy than a whodunnit. It is not really a question of twist and counter-twist, with the finger of suspicion moving from one person to another; it just gets more and more bizarrely convoluted. As with the previous Knives Out films, the characters are not, in fact, equally important and equally capable of murder. An inner core of suspects emerges and their guilt discloses itself incrementally at the end, as opposed to being withheld for a final reveal. What a treat though, with cracking turns from one and all and O’Connor the first among equals. Could he be the male star of the decade?
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