Rian Johnson is back; as writer and director of Knives Out. Oh boy, it’s hard to keep a level mind when Rian Johnson is mentioned right now, with all the animosity that has swirled his way following his last movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the lingering uncertainty that surrounds how the Star Wars trilogy will play out now, following Johnson’s contributions. But Knives Out is a separate film, and I will try to keep myself centred… let’s see how Rian goes about “subverting expectations” here in this movie!
Knives Out is a murder-mystery film, centring around a wealthy family in mourning after the loss of their patriarch. The police have concluded that Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) committed suicide, but Private Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has been secretly hired to take a second look at the case, and he suspects…foul play. Blanc tasks Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), Harlan’s home-nurse, with helping him with his investigation since she knows the family and has the least to gain from Harlan’s death. Marta also cannot tell a lie, because it leads her to throw up in every circumstance. Harlan’s family all attended a party at his mansion on the night of his murder and were seen bickering with him individually. Each family member is eying off a various portion of Harlan’s estate and so everyone is a suspect.
I feel like a good whodunit is extremely difficult to pull-off these days; with copious stories written for hourly police detective shows over the past decades, are there any surprise killer tricks or motives that we haven’t seen before? Murder-mystery movies are very rare now, with the Murder on the Orient Expression remake the only one I can think of in recent years. Knives Out pays homage to the classic genre fiction that has come before, with Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works referenced prominently.
A whodunit is ultimately about the payoff, and it can be hard to hide clues in plain sight; sometimes writers panic by including deliberately irrelevant annoying dead-ends. However, Knives Out works favourably by keeping its clues in tight. Not only that, it sets up information that pays off forward and back. The spot of blood that we see on Marta’s shoe comes at a time when we are worried how Marta might be incriminated for Harlan’s death, but the blood spot eventually comes to serve the purpose to assure us that Blanc has been competently following the case the whole time. There’s an apparently innocuous mug at the beginning of the film that may aim to initiate Harlan as a callous figurehead of the family, but the mug becomes most important at the end of the film to answer the movie’s final question, as to what Marta might do with her inheritance. The clues are layered and serve to take us in many different directions – in a moment where Marta thinks she has been sprung by Wanetta (K Callan), Harlan’s mother in the window, Marta is relieved that Wanetta has mistaken her for her grandson Ransom (Chris Evans), and dismisses Wanetta as batty. Well, Wanetta is batty, but seeing Ransom through the window might also be a vital clue to solving this case.
I think the movie anticipates that an audience might suspect Harlan has faked his own death, putting his family through the ringer for inspiration for his newest novel. Harlan mentions how his family wouldn’t know a fake knife if it was in front of them, and that makes you reconsider the suicide weapon, only for the movie to reuse that breadcrumb of conversation to foreshadow Ransom’s last action in front of the wheel of knives. Due to my suspicions of Rian Johnson’s credentials, I was ready to pounce if the ending of this movie was obvious or poorly executed. I considered that Harlan might reveal himself to still be alive, and considering Jamie Lee Curtis’ character even goads the audience by saying she’s waiting for her father to pop out and make sense of it all as well, I was ready to roast Rian Johnson’s semblance if that was the final outcome. I’ll admit, the only bit I found predictable was the outcome of the will reading, but I don’t think that is meant to be unforeseeable. I think the movie understands pitfalls of the genre and the parameters of its own story, and works intelligently within the fun-zone to create an exciting movie… It seems like Rian Johnson is aware of expectations, and accurately subverts them. I must concede, it might’ve been easier to be miserable about Star Wars: The Last Jedi if Rian Johnson had revealed himself to be a dumb-dumb here, but Knives Out comes about as high-quality storytelling and a thorough mystery. Maybe it’s time to take my wild-west shooter off the table concerning Star Wars, and look forward to Johnson’s next work.
Knives Out boasts a big cast too, with Daniel Craig and Toni Collette particularly getting to have some silly fun. It’s weird to think of Chris Evans as anything other than Captain America right now, but Evans channels his character from Not Another Teen Movie here, as a young cocky jock. The movie also includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon and Lakeith Stanfield to name a few more. Every character is given enough time and connection to be relevant to the murder case, so there’s no dead wood. It’s interesting to note how Daniel Craig’s character is used in the film too – at first, he is advertised as a very thorough detective, yet appears incompetent as we see Marta continuously cover up evidence that implicates her around him. You might think that is the joke, until the movie addresses Blanc’s own stupidity, only to later reveal he was a step ahead of the case the whole time. It’s like a four-stage rollercoaster with Blanc, and just as we catch up, the way he is used in the story changes.
But, do you reckon it’s possible that Rian Johnson ended Knives Out as a meta-comment to his backlash for Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Think of all the family members as Star Wars fans, investing their hopes and dreams into their father’s foundation (Star Wars), only for the powers that be (Disney) to leave the estate in the hands of an outsider (Rian Johnson). The most notable evidence of this is Walter (Michael Shannon) who has created nothing original on his own, but wants the rights to his father’s works to take them in his own direction. Sound like a debate of creative licence to me. There’s Joni (Toni Collette) who doesn’t contribute anything herself and relies on support from the family. She could be seen as a parallel to the general Star Wars moviegoer. Then there’s Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) who is on good terms with her father and is financially independent, but can’t deny she got a leg up off her family’s legacy. It’s a tricker connection, but perhaps she’s a jab at the shareholders or merchandising. There’s also the alt-right boy (Jaeden Martell) and SJW girl (Katherine Langford) who bicker over everything all on their own. The family hasn’t been particularly welcoming to Martha and yet they will be mad if she fails to meet their expectations with her inheritance. I might be clutching at a straw triangle through a round hole, and Johnson could have had the ideas for Knives Out fleshed out years ago, or, since Rian Johnson was given the reigns to Star Wars: The Last Jedi above everyone else, he could be imagining himself standing atop an empire of simmering haters down below, sipping from a mug that reads “My House. My Rules. My Coffee.”
4.0
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