Film Review - Knives Out (12A)

This is a twisted web, and we are not finished untangling it. Not yet.

The big-screen whodunit was a fixture of my youth. Peter Ustinov and Angela Lansbury were Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple respectively in star-strewn campy Agatha Christie adaptations, though none of those outings had the class of Sidney Lumet's 1974 Murder on the Orient Express. Thirty years later Kenneth Branagh remade Orient Express as a glitzy holiday-season spectacular. It was a fun throwback for sure, but ultimately too shallow and underwritten to fully satisfy. For that we needed writer/director Rian Johnson and his entirely original - if Christie-inspired - Knives Out. It's the who-(and why and how)-dunit we didn't know we were waiting for. But trust me, we all secretly were.

On the night of his 85th birthday (and in the first two minutes of the film) crime-writer and family patriarch Harlan Thrombey dies violently in his sprawling family home. The police are leaning towards suicide as cause, but renowned gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) senses that the finger of blame points elsewhere. The Thrombey clan are an eccentric and entitled bunch, bristling with secrets and grudges. Not even their meek immigrant health-care worker Marta (Ana de Armas) is a totally open book. Somewhere among the liberally scattered clues and red herrings lies the truth - but even the greatest sleuthing mind of his generation will be hard-pressed to uncover it.

That Rian Johnson knows his murder mystery classics is evident from the very beginning of Knives Out. The movie's opening act is physically constructed from Christie tropes, starting with the location. Thrombey mansion is an arcane Gothic pile, its interior a lavishly over-designed warren of secrets, all of it littered with bizarre collectables that writer Harlan seems to have conjured from his own thrillers. There's a body as well, a brilliant detective with a Gallic name and a clutch of family members whose potentially homicidal motives are uncovered in the opening interviews. It's all as Agatha as a story can get, with shows like Murder She Wrote playing in the background, just in case we didn't feel sufficiently steeped in Christie-esque murder fiction. (Even the publicity stills show the suspects decked in primary colours straight from Clue.)

And then when we think we know what we've got, Johnson delivers a reveal that pulls the whole whodunit format fully inside out. It's a genius move - delivering information we feel we have no business knowing this early on, putting us ahead of the game (though maybe not as far as we think), before we get blindsided by further twists that sends the plot spinning off in new, mad, exhilerating directions. The narrative is an extended exercise in genre subversion, backed up with a joyously witty and cunning script and some of the funniest moments in cinema this year. (These include the most memorable 'tell' with which any would-be liar could be cursed.) There's suspense too, long-time Johnson collaborator Steve Yedlin snaking his camera through the mansion to capture every crucial detail. Hint - don't let your attention drop for a second.

The ensemble cast clearly relishes the opportunity to be part of such juicy fun, not least Craig. His laconic detective is an enigma in himself, one with an outrageous southern drawl and a whimsical sense of philosophy. (You'll genuinely want to follow Benoit Blanc's succeeding cases, so engaging is his presence.) The Thrombeys are a vivid and distinctively drawn bunch; the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon and Toni Collette revel in their often grotesque characters, while Chris Evans turns his Captain America image gleefully on its head as a pampered trust-fund playboy. Christopher Plummer (pushing 90) gives great flashback as the soon-to-be-deceased head of the Thrombey empire, while de Armas (Blade Runner 2049) leads us into the heart of the investigation  - in more ways than one - as the massively endearing Marta. 

It should come as small surprise that the man who crafted genre-twisting pieces like high-school noir Brick and time-travel thriller Looper should now bring us Knives Out. In two crammed hours he deconstructs the whole murder-mystery thriller and puts it back together again in a way that interlocks perfectly, while satirising money, class and bitchy privilege along the way. It's a terrific crowd-pleasing achievement and even the percentage of Star Wars fans who hated his divisive Last Jedi might find it in their hearts to forgive him. They really should do. Johnson's crafty new film is just plain excellent.

Gut Reaction: Laughter from the gut, dropped jaw and the warm satisfaction of a brilliant tale concluded to plotting perfection.

Memorable Moment: The one where all your expectations go out an upper storey window. WT serious F???

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. Devious and hilarious, this is an intricate puzzle-box of a movie with a whole lot of brain and significantly more emotion than you'd expect. Whether or not you like Poirot and Marple, you'll find this a murderously delicious holiday treat.