In the Flesh: Glass Onion

The mystery, perhaps more than any other genre, relies on rigor in its structure. The rates at which audience and characters learn information, the art of dispensing little visual clues and flourishes, the pace of character development relative to our suspicions as viewers and to the overall level of tension animating the film. All of this requires careful calibration. There are other concerns, of course. All the usual elements of filmmaking still need to happen, and a visually and dramatically successful film can afford a few loose screws in its scaffolding. Glass Onion isn’t, and it can’t. Oh it’s funny enough, gorgeously costumed, and fairly entertaining throughout, but as a mystery it’s a complete non-starter. It has a single decent twist and that’s about the extent of its plotting. No tension, no red herrings, no plausible lines of inquest that might lead us anywhere but to its thuddingly predictable conclusion. Who did it? Why, the worst guy in the movie, of course!

Johnson’s followup to Knives Out also suffers from scale problems, with the international political ramifications of its core cast’s actions and problems leaving them less distinct human beings than embodiments of political subcultures. The neoliberal politician buoyed up by corporate money, the toxic Alpha Male streamer — each archetype feels only cursorily sketched out. There’s no chance to get a feel for the colorfully dressed characters before they’re immediately set aside in favor of Miles Bronn (Edward Norton), the obvious culprit and the film’s single weakest link. Bronn is a clear sendup of Elon Musk, a figure richly in need of a slap in the face, but where the real Musk is abrasive and cringey, difficult to watch because of his almost toxic levels of anti-charisma, Norton is mostly subdued and a little bit hippy-dippy. His malaprops and sulky fits of temper feel forced and unnatural, and even his personal handling of the central murder feels poorly explained. No matter how stupid, does a man that rich ever get his hands dirty?

The film’s island setting is at times amusing, and the glass-walled central compound’s clear visual kinship with the incoherent aesthetic hackery of, say, a Cheesecake Factory never fails to amuse, but on the level of framing and composition there isn’t much going on here. Perhaps most damning, the Poirot-style revelatory monologue occasions no rising tension, no physical confrontation or spike in emotional intensity, only a somewhat limp montage of Janelle Monae’s Helen smashing Bronn’s expensive statuary. Again Norton fails to rise to the occasion, whether though poor direction or his own misguided choices. Where the film should go big, it goes small. Where it should tighten its focus, it zooms outward until it loses all specificity. Glass Onion is less a murder mystery than it is a lukewarm burn against Elon Musk that happens to carry a forty million dollar price tag. "It looks complex but it's actually stupid," might work as a joke, but it can't carry a film.