Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, PG-13)

*Premise spoilers.*

Even though I really enjoyed Knives Out and was interested in this new movie, I didn’t jump on it as soon as it came out. I’m not sure why—maybe because, in the first film, I liked Marta more than I liked Benoit Blanc, and I was bummed that the new location/mystery meant she wouldn’t be around? Well, me of little faith, because this movie is great.

In the early days of COVID, tech billionaire Miles Bron invites his closest friends to a getaway on his private island, promising a relaxing weekend and an entertaining murder mystery game. When renowned detective Benoit Blanc shows up, everyone assumes Miles brought him in as part of the fun. The thing is, Blanc has an invitation, but Miles didn’t send it. Throw in a former partner with a serious grudge and lots of unsettled scores, and Blanc starts to wonder if Miles’ game might turn deadly serious.

This film has a lot of connective tissue with Knives Out, and not just because they’re both murder mysteries starring the same central detective. Both movies wrap their mysteries in a strong helping of class satire. The Musk/Zuckerberg/Bezos parallels with Miles are obvious, and his selfish, elitist friends who’ve hitched their wagons to him aren’t appreciably better. Like in Knives Out, Blanc gloms onto one of the guests/suspects as an amateur co-investigator, and it’s fun to watch their back-and-forth as they gather evidence and try to suss out the situation. And while the mysteries in both films take twists and turns, they also significantly reorient themselves in a major way over the course of the story.

But within those narrative and thematic similarities, Glass Onion still carves out a distinct place for itself. Miles’s self-indulgent excesses are endlessly roastable, and they’re on display throughout in both the dialogue and the production design. I like the way the film ponders the very nature of the whodunnit, getting kind of meta as it unravels its expectations of its own mystery. The setting, of course, is very different, as is the interpersonal dynamic between all the suspects. Plus, even Blanc’s appearance on the island adds a bit of additional intrigue.

I find that Blanc himself works better for me here than he did in the first film, where I thought he was just fine. I enjoy getting hints of his personal life here, including him going quarantine stir-crazy at home in the beginning without any murders to solve. And I feel like I just have a better sense of what Daniel Craig is doing with the character, which helps me get into it more. I really like that, while he’s a world-famous detective who’s the best at what he does, he continually chooses to identify the smart, observant outsider in the room and seek out their help in working through the case.

Similar again to the first film, the rest of the ensemble is impressively star-studded. Edward Norton brings Miles to life with committed pretension, Kate Hudson is having a great time as a dumb/racist celebrity has-been, and Dave Bautista goes all out as a gun-toting far-right influencer. Less larger-than-life but still effective, we have Leslie Odom Jr. as Miles right-hand man who’s charged with actually executing all of Miles’ wild ideas, Kathryn Hahn as a politician mid-campaign, Jessica Henwick as a long-suffering personal assistant, and Madelyn Cline as arm candy who’s worth more than she’s credited. (Cline is the only major cast member than I wasn’t familiar with, but while her role is smaller, she does well with it.) Then there’s Janelle Monáe as Andi, Miles’ former partner who was cut out of the business, and thus, the billions. Monáe is great in the film, alternately smart, steely, hurt, and funny.

Warnings

Violence, sexual content, language (including racial slurs and sexist insults,) drinking/smoking/drug use, and thematic elements.

Knives Out (2019, PG-13)

This is a movie whose trailer flashed its stacked cast and ambience at you, and while I didn’t rush out to see it opening weekend, I did grab the chance to catch it fairly early in its run. An interesting murder-mystery yarn that goes some places I wasn’t expecting and features a lot of terrific people doing nice work.

When renowned murder-mystery writer Harlan Thrombey apparently commits suicide on the night of his 85^th birthday, the family, already recently assembled for his party, gathers together again, first to mourn the loss of their patriarch and second to meet the probing eye of one Benoit Blanc, a well-respected private detective hired anonymously to investigate Harlan’s death. Naturally, everyone has something they’re hiding, and it’s up to Blanc to determine if any of those secrets add up to murder. In the middle, caught between the eccentric detective and the wealthy bereaved family, is Harlan’s nurse Marta, the one who cares the most that he’s dead.

One thing I should point out is that this movie is rather deceptively advertised. The trailers highlighted the star-studded actors playing the Thrombeys, from Jamie Lee Curtis to Chris Evans to Toni Collette to Michael Shannon to Christopher Plummer as the deceased Harlan. Really, though, the movie isn’t about them. While they’re all well-cast and do fine jobs, they’re there more as pieces in the puzzle than characters in the story. More central is Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, who’s better-positioned in the proceedings (and who I wouldn’t be surprised to see turn up again in a new whodunit.) However, ultimately, this is the story of Marta, played by Ana de Armas. I wasn’t at all familiar with de Armas before seeing this movie, but she holds her own impressively against a number of Hollywood heavyweights.

I like that Marta is the main character we follow, the one who’s existed in the Thrombeys’ lives (“you’re one of the family!” they repeatedly insist to her) but isn’t one of them (“you should’ve been invited to the funeral – I was overruled,” they repeated confide to her.) She knows things because they speak in her presence forgetting that she’s there, and in the last years of Harlan’s life, she came to understand him better than any of them did. It’s an interesting vantage point for the story to follow, and it makes for an interesting focal point for the movie.

As for the mystery, there are some good twists and turns, and even if there are some developments I guessed along the way, it’s still fun to see how they play out. Similar to how the film defies expectations (and its own marketing) by centering around the cast member with the shortest resumé, it also goes against the grain of what I think of as the usual murder-mystery/whodunit format. I won’t get into any specifics, for the sake of spoilers, but the story bends in directions I don’t expect to, and that makes it easy to get invested. Although the movie is a little too long and definitely feels it at times, it’s an entertaining romp that revels in its own 21^st-century Agatha Christie-ness.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, drinking/smoking, a little gross-out humor, and thematic elements.