In the Flesh: Knives Out

At the center of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is a spirit of social satire, a willingness to jab not just at sociopathic alt-right teens but at complacently liberal adults and the insular, disconnected lives of the rich no matter their political affiliations. That like the prop knife mentioned in the first act and dutifully drawn in the third it isn’t sharp enough to cut is forgivable in light of its brisk pace, clever characterization, and occasional witty visual flourishes. As a movie about the transfer of wealth, the precarity of life as an illegal immigrant, and the venal hypocrisy of white progressives it’s only intermittently biting, but as an homage to Agatha Christie it does more than serviceable work.

The film follows a pair of protagonists: drawling Cajun detective Benoit Blanc, played with aplomb by Daniel Craig, and shrewd but nervous registered nurse Marta Cabrera, a suitably cutting Ana de Armas. While Blanc attempts to unravel the film’s central mystery, Marta seeks to cover up her own accidental role in it. Lakeith Stanfield and Raúl Castillo play perfectly adequate supporting police officers, though frankly their presence in addition to Blanc’s doesn’t add much tension or bring anything to the table Craig can’t manage on his own. The dueling plots are a clever conceit, the interviews between Blanc and the victim’s family of failsons and priggish, moneyed boors enjoyable as absurd character portraits.

The cast is a Where’s Waldo? page of different types of racism, from Richard’s (Don Johnson) plain-talk MAGA stupidity to Joni’s (Toni Collette) wheedling, insincere claims of allyship and instant reversion to naked selfishness when the former claim encounters its first speed bump. In this context Johnson’s script gets a little too mawkish about Marta as a good, warm-hearted person, something Blanc outright states at first semi-jokingly and later with total sincerity. Knives Out has something to say about class relations, but that something is diluted by the film’s need to make Marta morally unimpeachable and to make sure the audience knows it. Understandable, but less interesting than fleshing her out more fully. The kindly understanding of family patriarch Harlan comes off as a little sugary, too, Christopher Plummer’s always excellent work aside.

Knives Out is fun, and with its strong cast and snappy script it avoids the pitfalls of quip-based humor and gets at something more natural and less uniform. Its sets are a cluttered joy to pore over and a late monologue delivered by Blanc in which he feverishly discusses donuts and donut holes goes from silly to stale to laugh-out-loud funny as his fervor builds and his metaphors descend into near-total incoherence. Not a classic, and no contender with its most obvious sources of inspiration such as Murder on the Orient Express, but you could do much worse for a night at the movies.