(Disclaimer: You might think it's weird to be writing a review of a film that came out 3 years ago, when the sequel is everyone's focus right now, but in fairness it only just got onto Netflix and I'd never seen it before. Plus, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is....odd. I can't tell how intentional its quirkiness is, or if the mystery is meant to have so much less substance to it. Essentially, it was fun, but I have much less to actually say about it than Knives Out. Oh, also, spoilers.)
Usually, I assume that a movie or TV show is unquestionably smarter than me, and watching Knives Out proved to me...I should keep assuming that. At least when watching murder mysteries.
I'll back up. The reason I hold the assumption that a piece of media is one step ahead of me is because for some reason I fail to grasp often fairly basic plots surprisingly frequently. Now, admittedly, this causes some problems, because this can sometimes cause me, when watching a movie with a lot of plot holes for the first time, to brush these off and think "oh, I just don't understand this, I just don't get it" rather than "I don't get it, because it doesn't make sense". (I can't think of a good example at the time of writing and I know I will the second I publish this.)
But with Knives Out, you can see from a mile away it's a carefully crafted masterpiece. The mystery is, as everyone has probably said already, perfectly set up, but what makes me certain that I've been outwitted by the writers is that the smallest details come back later and you'll kick yourself for missing them. That's why it's a great film to rewatch (which I did), because you'll notice stuff you didn't the first time about it. It all feels really smart. Plus the more obvious outwitting of the audience is what you think you know being proven to be completely wrong.
If you don't know already, Knives Out surrounds the mystery of the suicide of Harlan Thrombey, an 85-year-old mystery writer who kills himself by cutting his throat. (There's a whole lot more to it than that, but this is the main thing to remember.) Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) plus two cops that aren't as interesting investigate his death, interview the family, suspecting a murder. My point about our perception of things changing over time is best exemplified in the fact that we think Harlan's nurse and friend, Marta, accidentally caused Harlan's death by giving him excess morphine for most of the movie. It's a fact we're supposed to accept for the entirety of the movie, Harlan was going to die because of Marta's mistake, only for us to find out that Marta in fact gave him the right dosage because the labels for Harlan's ketorolac and morphine had been switched, and she subconsciously knew there was a difference in the appearance of the two substances, so gave him the one labelled morphine because the substance was ketorolac. (She gave him the right amount, because she'd done it so many times before. I had to watch it twice to wrap my head around this.) It's kind of a brilliantly morbid irony that Harlan would've actually been fine if he hadn't chosen to cut his own throat in order to keep Marta in the clear, and it's fun that even though the truth of his death is "revealed" at the start, we continue to get more fragments of information throughout until the true (attempted) murderer is revealed. (It's Ransom, his grandson, by the way. Feel like that's worth noting.)
Obviously all the performances are great, I usually find it hard to criticise actors anyway because I feel too iffy about it, but it's not a problem here. Ana de Armas' performance is the best of the cast, she is fucking incredible as Marta she's such a sympathetic protagonist, you really feel her anxiety and grief throughout her whole ordeal and you're somehow even when you think she's responsible for Harlan's death you're rooting for her to get away with it. I definitely get why she's a fancast for a young Evelyn Hugo, though I have no idea if she is because I don't know anything about the movie, other than that it's happening. (See I can link anything back to that book, just watch me.) She did also play Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, which was pretty shit apparently, but not because of her. Chris Evans was amazing as Ransom as soon as he walked in with his hilariously cocky smirk and starts telling his family to "eat shit", but he's great the whole time and I definitely didn't think he was gonna be the villain. Apparently a lot of people did, so good for you I guess, but come on! He's Chris Evans! Daniel Craig's performance as Blanc is solid in general, it's super satisfying to see him piece it all together at the end in a very Sherlock Holmes type fashion, but his very deep Southern American accent is something to get used to if you've only seen him as James Bond. I don't think it's necessarily bad, I just think I'm weirded out by it because it sounds like Jay Gatsby if he was putting on a deliberately Southern drawl instead of a high-society New York voice. Eh, anyway, Craig is good in this and he's good in Glass Onion as the central protagonist, it's just I can tell his accent is fake because it's so....odd. Typically I think a lot of English actors will go for a Northern, (I think?) New Yorker accent because it's easier to mimick, so it's unconventional. (Also weird idea but I feel like it'd be a fun drinking competition to try and best replicate Blanc's accent....no? No? Okay.)
Also, I really like the moral of the story. Everyone gets exactly what they deserved! Marta is now in her rightful place, she gets her moment to look down upon the (shitty) Thrombey family because that's all they've done to her. Granted, we have no idea how she treats them afterward given she says to Blanc that she should help them, but it's super vindicating to see that shot of her looking down at them while drinking from Harlan's "My House, My Rules, My Coffee" mug.
I think I just disproved my own point there. She got there in the first place by "playing her game" as Blanc says. Genuinely, all Marta did was be a good, hardworking person, and since none of the family could claim the same, she got her inheritance. (It's actually really clever how subtly the family's mistreatment of her is inserted into the movie.) And I really like that it ends like that, it's not a fluffy, happy ending, it's just everyone getting their just desserts, Ransom goes to jail, the family get fuck all, Marta gets a life of comfort. Sometimes I think creators will go out of their way to make their endings unnecessarily tragic, ie, if Rian Johnson had chosen to have Ransom stab Marta with a real knife instead of a prop knife, and it ends with her death. Nope, things just ended as they were supposed to.
The point is, I think there's something to be said for a non-kid's movie to convey the message that being a good person does have its just rewards, and delivers it in a non-patronising way. Like, don't be a kind hard worker to get a fortune, but hey if you do that just because it's the right thing to do....you might get a fortune? Look, the movie delivers it smarter than I do.
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