Knives Out

My old blog seems to have been terminally infected with malware, so while I work out what to do about that I’m setting this one up as a sort of blog-in-exile. I’m planning to use it to post some reviews of things that may help to divert and entertain us all in These Dark Times. Starting with my favourite film of 2019, which is now streaming and about to be released on DVD and Blu-ray.

A good heart these days is famously hard to find, and good scripts are even thinner on the ground. Happily, Knives Out possesses both of these rare commodities. Written by director Rian Johnson, it sets itself up as a traditional murder mystery, opening as famous old crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead during a gathering of his bickering family at his country house. It introduces its cast of suspects and its gentleman sleuth with a neat set of interviews and flashbacks and, after about twenty minutes, takes an unusual twist by showing us what actually happened. By then, so playful and elegant is the writing, we’re ready to follow it anywhere, and off it goes, piling twist upon twist, all the way to its clever and satisfying conclusion.

The ensemble cast is terrific, and clearly having fun. Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Chris Evans, and Don Johnson are among the dead man’s unscrupulous family, Ana de Armas is his nurse Marta Cabrera, and Daniel Craig deploys an outrageous Blanche DuBois drawl as Benoit Blanc, the detective trying to ferret out the truth. The film touches on Trump-era politics (Marta is an immigrant, and there’s a neat running gag when each of the Thrombeys, despite claiming her as one of the family, think she comes from a different South American country) but it’s built into the plot well enough not to feel like a sermon (and thus makes its point much more effectively). It’s a film that should appeal to both the art house crowd, who can enjoy it as a knowing send-up of detective story tropes (‘the guy basically lives in a Clue(do) board’ says one of the investigating cops) and to the Midsummer Murders fraternity, because it still works perfectly well as a whodunnit.

If that were all, it would be quite enough reason to watch it. But what I think elevates Knives Out from the status of solid entertainment to that of a minor classic is its good heart. It’s a kind movie. Benoit Blanc has none of the hang-ups and flaws with which fictional detectives are so often saddled, he’s simply a good man looking for the truth. Marta is so good that she’s literally incapable of telling a lie- doing so makes her physically ill. (The movie, of course, keeps thrusting her into situations where she desperately needs to lie.) They’re two of the nicest characters I’ve seen in a film this century, and they’re so well written and well acted that their decency feels entirely believable. This kindness extends throughout the cast - the family are venal hypocrites, (‘it will be good for you’ they tell the grandson who finds himself cut out of the dead man’s will. But when they find that they too have been cut out, do they think it will be good for them? Spoiler: they do not.) A lot of them are heels, most of them are fools, and all of them are in the wrong, but (with one exception) they don’t seem irredeemably bad. And the policemen, who usually exist in this sort of story mainly to obstruct the genius detective’s work and then stand amazed at his skill when he unmasks the villain, are just as well-drawn: Lt Eliot (the excellent LaKeith Stanfield) is dependable and serious, which helps to anchor Benoit Blanc’s eccentricity, while Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) provides comic relief, not by being an idiot, but by his fanboyish knowledge of the victim’s novels. They are only side characters, but I liked them more than I like the protagonists of most films.

As for its flaws, I can’t really think of any. There are some things which strain credibility (the victim has made a fortune writing best selling thrillers but publishes them through his own publishing company, which seems a little unlikely) but because it gets the tone so right in the opening scenes we just accept such oddities as part of the film’s quirky world, like Daniel Craig’s accent. There’s quite a lot of swearing, which isn’t really a flaw but might be worth noting if you’re planning to show it to your ten year old child or maiden aunt (both of whom would otherwise enjoy it, I think). There are scenes which may disturb emetophobes, and one shot which greatly disturbed this arachnophobe. It’s a mark of how good Knives Out is that, for once, I didn’t mind.