Review Detail

Moving on to Glass Onion, which I watched last night. Why, one might ask, would I bother since Craig’s performance was so hammy and abysmal? Because I thought he would drop his dreadful Southern accent (whose very bad idea was that?) or at least make an effort to improve. Surely these production companies have top dialect coaches and if Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde) and Jodie Foster (Silence of the Lambs) can manage a southern accent, why not Craig? Who knows, but his accent slipped all over the place like soap in the shower and only added to the jarring issues that appeared.

This plot was more like the traditional Agatha Christie murder mystery. A sleazy tech billionaire, played by Ed Norton, invites a group of close friends to his getaway island for a murder mystery weekend. His death, to be exact. But interestingly, he is not the one murdered and before the group arrives on the island, one of them (who was actually murdered), miraculously appears on the pier to the shock and horror of several people. Somehow Benoit Blanc is invited. Again, can one go wrong with acting stalwarts like Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Dave Bautista, Leslie Odom Jr, and an absolutely brilliant, scene-stealing Jackie Hoffman (playing Bautista’s Ma). Lest I forget, the original Mona Lisa painting gets a star spot, and the inimitable Angela Lansbury has a cameo. This plot was a little short on details but one soon surmises that Miles Bron’s friends are actually hugely dependent on him for their careers and will say and do anything to stay in his good books. The pace soon kicks off when one of the group dies, fatally poisoned by a celebratory drink. Mayhem, carnage, and a fiery meltdown ensue. Most watchable is Kate Hudson as Birdie Jay.

Daniel Craig is so bad in this rendition of a detective that he makes Kenneth Branagh’s attempts to play Hercule Poirot seem comparable to Sir Laurence Olivier. The Southern accent is worse than bad. I do not think it even exists in the canon of southern dialects. Half the time he is incomprehensible. Craig’s actual performance veered from slapstick clowning to over-the-top drama queen. I have faithfully watched all his James Bond movies, more out of loyalty to the brand than to the actor. Comedy is not his forte. It seems as if the director and the scriptwriter took bits from all the famous detectives that have gone before (Poirot, Holmes, Maigret, C. Auguste Dupin, Morse, Mason, Wexford, Dalgleish, et al.) and cobbled together an awful Frankenstein monster. However, given the ratings and box office takings, people love this mishmash of a detective. Who am I to judge, except to give my honest opinion.

I am playing devil’s advocate here, but I wonder when Daniel Craig and Hugh Grant will have to apologise to the woke Alphabet Soup mob for playing gay characters when neither of them is gay. I also found that angle annoying, irrelevant, and vaguely insulting to the gay community. Either this was an effort to be fully woke and ‘inclusive’ or this was an effort to lure the gay audience because the producers did not quite trust that gay viewers would watch it unless there was something in it for them. Anyone of any sexual orientation will tell you they watch a movie because they like an actor or a genre, not because they have to be persuaded. Even more bewildering is that Benoit Blanc's being gay has no bearing whatsoever on the character and what he does. If the door-opening scene had been cut, one would not know, and it would make no difference to the story.

I am not sure if I will watch another Benoit Blanc mystery.