Knives Out
Writing a good “whodunit” story requires a lot of excellent, but moving parts. The first being a great cast of characters all with valid motivations for potentially being the killer/criminal. Second, a sleuth that can be sympathized with by the audience and help to feed the audience information. Third, the case needs to interesting and exciting, something that the audience can get invested in and feel committed to seeing the solution to. With all three of these elements working in tandem, an excellent “whodunit” story can be born. Since I’ve started writing there’s only one film like this that I’ve seen and that is Murder on the Orient Express. Not an overall great film, Orient Express managed to get one of these tent-poles done perfectly, but fail on the others. Knives Out manages to get all three of these tent-poles right and as a result, the film exceeds expectations for the genre magnificently.
Our story begins with Harlan Thrombey, the caretaker and father figure of the Thrombey family. Harlan is a prolific mystery novelist, creating stories that sell millions of copies and allow him to live a rather lavish lifestyle. As a result, different members of his family have started to take advantage of the kindness he has offered them. Feeling rather alone, Harlan hires a caretaker by the name of Marta, and they begin to have a close friendship. On his 85th birthday, his entire family returns to his home to celebrate, with multiple confrontations taking place at the party. Finally, the next morning when one of the members of the house staff goes to give him his breakfast, he is discovered dead in his study via a cut along his throat due to an apparent suicide. But, Benoit Blanc a private investigator hired by an unknown party, suspects foul play and requires everyone return to the home for questioning.
A film of this kind, as mentioned in the opening, requires an excellent cast to succeed. Thankfully, there’s a menagerie of excellent talent on display here. Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, Ana De Armas, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer, and Daniel Craig. There’s some standout performances here, specifically Daniel Craig, Ana De Armas, and Chris Evans.
Craig plays the sleuth Benoit Blanc, a man of mystery who isn’t just on the hunt for the killer, but for the person who hired him anonymously to get involved in the case. He’s a different type of character than I’m used to him playing, and even with this potential negative, he still manages to give an excellent performance for a character that could have been very much one note. There’s a level of comedic timing that comes with his character as well that helps to make him that much more enjoyable.
Evans plays a spoiled rotten grandchild of Harlan, whose role in the story doesn’t truly come into play until the second act. Regardless of his overall screen-time, seeing Evans play a role that isn’t an incredibly good person (ala Captain America/Steve Rogers) is incredible refreshing and helps him to stretch his range as an actor. I truly despised Ransom, but found his presence on screen to be electric and overall someone I didn’t want to miss any moments of.
De Armas plays Marta, someone who in my history of her filmography hasn’t had a true leading role on this level outside of Blade Runner 2049. A character with a lot of sympathetic qualities, De Armas is an excellent emotional lead for this story and helps to guide the audience along for a majority of the film. Marta has some specific quirks that make her an excellent piece to the overall narrative, and as a result her bond with Blanc becomes a critical part to the narrative of the film.
Usually this would be where I talk about different themes throughout the film, but instead I want to talk about the attention to detail given by Rian Johnson and the writers of Knives Out. A film of this kind requires quite a large amount of deception but hint giving to the audience. As a result, the film will be largely made or broken based on how easy it is to follow the overall narrative. For someone such as myself whose always looking for little details in sequence and trying to make predictions about the solution, Knives Out treats me to a lot of mental hoops and red herrings that are absolutely magnificent. There was a multitude of times throughout this film that I leaned over to Angel and said “I bet so and so did it,” or “I wonder if this is what happened.” Surprisingly she didn’t get annoyed and actually enjoyed my mental gymnastics.
Thinking back on my theater experience for Knives Out, I found it to be one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year. Being able to feel the tension in the room between all of these antagonistic family members as they turned against one another, and seeing how the story twisted and turned to create a narrative that is easily follow-able, but not overly simplistic made for an awesome viewing. Instead of leaving the mystery to the last few moments of the film, there’s time given to the solution and it feels like instead of the solution being the resolution to the story, it’s more about the reasoning behind it. Seeing actors who have been given a relative typecasting to their roles take on new challenges was also great for the film, and allowed it to have a fresh feeling as a whole. Overall, Knives Out is an exciting film, one that keeps you guessing to the very end, and one rife with excellent performances to the point that you don’t want to leave the theater when the final credits roll.
