Knives Out (2019)

written and directed by Rian Johnson

Ever since his debut with 2005’s Brick – a hard-boiled detective story transposed to a high school setting – writer/director Rian Johnson has been deconstructing established genres with glee. In 2012’s Looper, he set his sights on sci-fi/horror, with a time travel yarn that somehow built to young and old versions of the same character trying to save/kill a telekinetic child (it’s as loopy as its title). And in 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, he pissed off fans of the saga with his individualistic take on the saga’s tropes. (Lest not forget his three superb contributions to Breaking Bad, two of which I consider among the best episodes of the 2008-2013 series).

Bottom line: Johnson likes to mess with your expectations. And that’s a good thing.

With Knives Out Johnson tackles the whodunit-in-a-big-old-house, and you can tell he’s having a great time not only playing with the framework, but also commenting on it as he goes along: The murdered patriarch, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), is a mystery writer himself; a local detective takes a look at Thrombey’s mansion and says, “The guy practically lives in a Clue board”; and in a coup of clever casting, Daniel Craig – James Bond himself – plays Benoit Blanc, a quirky world-famous investigator with a Southern drawl who references Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (while acknowledging no one has ever read it) and sings along to Stephen Sondheim. Hell, this is a movie in which the victim himself tells the killer how to get away with the crime.

For traditional sleuth fanatics, Knives Out may be too stylized an exercise, but that’s sort of the point. Strap in and enjoy.

Rating: ***

Carlos I. Cuevas