Netflix
The fun mystery movie Knives Out came out in 2019 and introduced us to new debonair gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (a pitch perfect Daniel Craig with a melange of an accent). This year we had two attempts at the genre, Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile (which was a huge mess) and direct Agatha Christie pastiche/homage See How They Run (which was decent enough but quite forgettable). Apparently it’s hard to get the formula right, and simply copying Agatha Christie or including her as a character isn’t the answer — but Rian Johnson has done it twice.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is written and directed by Rian Johnson and plays with the formula the first movie already played with. It all revolves around billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton) and the various friends he’s made along the way to success. We are introduced to a new motley group of characters: the progressive politician Claire (Kathryn Hahn), the loyal if distressed scientist who works for Miles’ company named Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr), problematic influencer Birdie (Kate Hudson) and her stressed assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick), and topped off with right wing men’s rights activist Duke (Dave Bautista) and his girlfriend Whiskey.
The movie starts off with all of them converging on a yacht headed for Miles’ yearly party, albeit set in the midst of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Topical themes are a pretty big presence in this movie, and this party reminds of some of the insulated, tone deaf parties of the rich during the 2020 timeframe. But also showing up at the yacht are two unexpected guests, Andi (Janelle Monáe), the estranged former business partner of Miles, and Benoit Blanc, who tells Miles he somehow got delivered an invitation despite not knowing any of them.
Of course, there are plenty of twists and turns ahead, with a few clever flashbacks that shed light on how things got to where they are. We don’t have the unique twist of the first Knives Out, but there’s still a murder to be solved and many potential suspects. I would say that this movie does an even better job than the first at giving all of these characters a chance to shine, which is good, because this is a stacked cast of excellent performances, some of which are even more complicated (as you might expect) than at first glance.
I can’t say I figured out the mystery at first, but it all holds together well enough and feels like a justified conclusion. The movie is also quite funny, with a lot of dark humor and laugh out loud moments of levity amidst the often campy murder pieces — yet there is also real tension and dread at times when it’s needed.
It’s hard to really shout out one particular performance in this movie, with so many fun and layered performances — Edward Norton is always great, as is Kathryn Hahn, but it’s fun to see relative newcomers and people like Dave Bautista stretch their acting talents. Janelle Monáe gets to play some interesting stuff too past her usual roles, and Daniel Craig is great as he was in the first movie.
Perhaps the best recommendation I can make is that this is a mystery, like the first one, that will be fun to watch again and maybe spot what you’ve missed the first time around. I had a great time watching it and suspect that it could’ve done even better in the theaters had it been permitted to last there a bit longer. And definitely happy to see whatever Knives Out tale might come next.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery has a run time of 2 hours 20 minutes and is rated PG-13 for strong language, some violence, sexual material and drug content.
Netflix
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