The Razor's Edge

In 2005, a debut filmmaker called Rian Johnson made an indie movie about a teen attempting to solve the murder of his ex-girlfriend called Brick; a movie written in the style and structure of a hardboiled film noir in the vein of Dashiell Hammett. It’s something he would spend the next decade and a half doing: playing around within genre fiction and putting his own spin on it, and he’s well on his way to having one of the most fascinating careers in Hollywood because of it.

He hit his big break with the slick time travel action movie Looper, went on to direct a few of the most acclaimed episodes of Breaking Bad, and followed that up by writing and directing The Last Jedi, not only the best Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back by a long shot, but possibly one of the best films of the 2010s. The success and name recognition afforded him by the latter allowed him to make this most unusual movie, Knives Out, a murder mystery-thriller that returns him to the kind of subject matter of Brick, but filtered through instead of Hammett, Agatha Christie –yet all the same, a purely Rian Johnson interpretation.

Everyone knows the plot necessities: the victim is wealthy mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), the suspects are his family gathered together at his estate for his birthday, and the detective is a classical gentleman sleuth by the name of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). There are one-on-one interviews between the detective (alongside his foil) with the suspects, conjecture and outright lies, clue gathering, and a parlour scene where the truth all comes out as the detective explains in detail how he solved the case. We expect these things, want them, and Johnson delivers. But he does so much in the process to keep the film fresh, unexpected, and fun. A good whodunit can be enormous fun, and Christie could convey that better than anyone –hence why she’s had dozens of imitators over the decades; but her best mysteries were always the ones that had unique twists in their structure or plotting like And Then There Were None, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Five Little Pigs, and of course Murder on the Orient Express, something usually missing from her modern descendents. But not Knives Out.

Because Knives Out not only changes the game by rewriting the structure in a fashion similar to Columbo and then a suspense thriller, but fleshes out the films’ personality in an idiosyncratic but distinctly modern way. The world is obviously heightened a little as is required by the detective genre, but it’s very clearly a recognizable one inhabited by all-too familiar characters. There’s the prideful, independent businesswoman (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the insecure, frustrated capitalist (Michael Shannon); the socially progressive yet transparently privileged college student (Katherine Langford) and the Nazi teenage internet troll (Jaeden Martell) (no doubt inspired by the more extreme sects of Star Wars “fans” Johnson has had to deal with) –and the immigrant nurse (Ana de Armas) subtly exploited by the family. As with Murder on the Orient Express (both the Lumet and Branagh adaptations), and Gosford Park, Knives Out makes use of an ensemble cast of stars; but among the list of talent that also includes Toni Collette, Don Johnson, LaKeith Stanfield, Riki Lindhome, Noah Segan, M. Emmett Walsh, and Frank Oz, it’s de Armas who shines strongest as the most significant character of the story. A scapegoat and symbolic avatar while being a fully developed figure in her own right, de Armas is stupendous, often carrying the movie through its most important and dramatic moments –even with one really comical character trait. Chris Evans is also a stand-out as the spoiled eldest grandson, relishing the chance to play an unabashed bastard after a decade as America’s most upright superhero. The only person having more fun than him is Craig, letting loose as this Kentucky Poirot with more joyful zeal than he’s expressed in any recent performance, save for perhaps his similarly accented turn in Logan Lucky.

But of course the script is so strongly and sharply written that each character is clearly a delight for their actor to play. Johnson peppers the dialogue with great doses of wit and honest feeling that you get a decent sense of who everyone is and what their motivations are. We’re introduced to them through their initial interviews with investigators, the film cutting back and forth between them (often to great comedic effect) –a tremendously economic way to meet such a motley gang of suspects.  And the way Johnson plots the film with sophistication, lining up every detail purposefully is matched in cleverness by the shrewd metaphor he intricately strings through the story; a metaphor that sees the Thrombey clan and their estate as a microcosm of the United States itself and its uncomfortable, often contradictory politics played out through offhand assertions and microaggressions.

On top of everything else, Knives Out is just gorgeous. Its’ production work is stunning, the circular knife collection being an instantly iconic bit of set decoration (as well as a perfect Chekhov’s Gun). Despite its’ gothic appearance, the manor is exquisitely lit and beautifully ornate. Johnson and cinematographer Steve Yedlin are also very particular with their framing choices: our introduction to Blanc for instance is in silent, inconspicuousness in the background of the frame as Stanfield and Segan’s police officers question suspects. A moment of intense confusion for de Armas is shot with chaotic claustrophobia as it tracks her out of the house. These kind of neat filmmaking choices, very rare in mainstream blockbuster cinema, are all over the movie, and Johnson demonstrates again after Looper and The Last Jedi a mastery of cinematic language and crafting a tone.

All around, Knives Out is just one of the most entertaining films to come out this year. It’s a fiendish delight from its opening reveal to its final tremendously satisfying shot; the kind of film that gives a welcome jolt of life to the blockbuster movie scene (sorely in need of one now). “Whodunit” isn’t that difficult a mystery to solve, but Knives Out doesn’t care –it’s purpose is to brilliantly enrapture and delight through a genre many might have written off, and prove it can still be as sharp as it has always been.

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