Review of Knives Out (2019) by Nmuldoon — 27 Nov 2019

What’s been part of the fun of following Rian Johnson’s career over the last 15 years is seeing just which genre Johnson will choose to tackle next. Ever since his debut, Rian Johnson has proven himself as a scholar of genre filmmaking; showing not only a keen knowledge of the rules each genre but how to update them. Sometimes this was trading the seedy nightclubs and political offices of 40’s noir for the lunchroom tables of different social cliques as in ‘Brick’ or updating the social politics of a galaxy far far away in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’. Rian Johnson has always found a way to tell new stories in the medium of something old-fashioned. Knives Out, his latest, repeats this trick to perhaps its greatest effect yet.

Knives Out is in a lot of ways a classic whodunnit, it follows an eccentric detective, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, reprising his Southern drawl from ‘Logan Lucky’) as he investigates the death of a wealthy crime fiction novelist, Harlan Thrombley (Christopher Plummer), and questions the family of suspects who could have murdered him. Rian Johnson’s film pays homage to the work of Agatha Christie with every staple that Christie purists could hope for, - the larger-than-life cast of suspects, the old ornate Victorian home, the big reveal scene where our brilliant detective puts everything together - and yet Knives Out feels completely fresh.

What Knives Out does is update the whodunnit genre to make is distinctly American and show what our society looks like in a post-Trump world. Rian Johnson’s film in a lot of ways is not too different from Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’, as a genre film that’s a trojan horse, in this case to talk about class and privilege in America. Similar to Peele’s film, Knives Out also shows a boldness in calling out the hypocrisies and ignorance of those on both sides of the political aisle. As we meet character after character in the Thrombley family, each is eager to proudly claim full credit for their own personal success while comically defensive of how they obtained it. Meanwhile the film juxtaposes this with the character of Marta, (Ana de Armas) Harlan’s caretaker, a young hard-working Latina woman who perhaps was the only one who truly cared about Harlan. Throughout the film, the Thrombleys continue to tell Blanc how Marta is just like family to them while we see her constantly condescended and ignored. A very sharp reoccurring joke even features each Thrombley with a completely different answer (Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil) for where they think Marta’s family immigrated from. The way these distinctions Rian Johnson creates in class and privilege only deepen as the central mystery reveals itself creates a keenly observed snapshot of our contemporary culture. In some ways, this may actually be Johnson’s greatest homage to Agatha Christie, as she too, was an author who used her work to also critique the society of her era.

Knives Out has a distinct sense of tone unique for the genre. While the whodunnit has seen several serious adaptation like ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘Death on the Nile’, and camp parodies like ‘Clue, and ‘Murder by Death’ - Johnson’s film falls somewhere right between. Knives Out is a film that takes its mystery and air of suspense seriously, but has fun undercutting it by finding the comedy in it’s heightened characters and ridiculous circumstances. In a lot of ways it’s a similar approach to genre that his contemporary Edgar Wright (who even gets a small shout out) has taken in the past with films like ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz. These are films with a deep regard toward their genre and influences looking to create something in their tradition while finding a new comedic take on it.

It feels somewhat perfect that Knives Out would be released on Thanksgiving, the film echoes the very conversations many Americans are having with their families around dinner tables this week but manages to illustrate them in the most entertaining way possible. It’s no hyperbole to say that this film is one of the most fun experiences I’ve had at the cinema in recent years. Rian Johnson’s latest is a genre exercise that is thrilling, hilarious, and has more than a few things to say. Knives Out is not just the perfect entertainment for your holiday weekend, it’s one of the best films of the year.