Review Detail

 In Knives Out, the first Benoit Blanc murder mystery, Harlan Thrombey, a well-known crime novelist is found dead after his 85th birthday. His throat had been slashed. Could it have been suicide? Can people even slash their own throats??? Top detective Benoit Blanc is called in to solve the murder mystery. Harlan’s family, despite an outward appearance of unity, soon reveals their divisions, discord, greed, hatred, conniving, and intrigue. They are the perfect bunch of suspects.

To say I was underwhelmed is an understatement. The plot had all the makings of a good, old-fashioned murder mystery that aficionados of famous detectives would love, sitting back on the sofa, chomping popcorn, and solving the crime with their favourite detective. Then it all fell apart. Let’s start with the plot. Long, convoluted, repetition of scenes, people driving here and there and back and forth, a shoal of red herrings, a vacuous and boring heroine, and inevitably ennui sets in when one thinks that the movie is two hours and ten minutes long. The murder turned out not to be a murder at all, but the reason given via an incomprehensible southern twang in an execrable performance by Daniel Craig was weak and did not hold up to scrutiny.

The cast… Well, can one go wrong in a movie when you have acting greats like Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Colette, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, M. Emmet Walsh, Don Johnson, and Frank Oz? Yes, when you have the lead detective being played so appallingly by Daniel Craig, but more on that in my review of The Glass Onion. The murder mystery concept is perforce stagey, but it is expected of the genre and the actors certainly did their bit. But the badly worked out script and the glaring plot holes requiring the above-mentioned back and forth hampered the actors from appearing to advantage. Most watchable are Jamie Lee Curtis and Toni Colette who do OTT so well.