If this is Daniel Craig’s post-Bond career move, I am looking forward to the next installment by Writer-Director Rian Johnson. Benoit Blanc is part Foghorn Leghorn, part Clouseau encased in the dedication of Poirot.
The short version of Knives is what happens if you mixed a standard Agatha Christie whodunnit story with doses of dark humor and for some reason Columbo. Why the old Seventies detective show? This isn’t a spoiler by now but one character isn’t guilty yet the evidence keeps piling up against them. As for the Christie elements, everybody in the family has a motive to killing off the murder-mystery author patriarch. The police and Blanc just can’t get the dots to connect on any though.
Johnson’s movie is also very ambitious via the cast. He roped in a dream team: Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Christopher Plummer, Chris Evans, Toni Collette and a cameo from Frank Oz. Films with such names either flop painfully or stick the landing, rarely is there an in-between. He pulled off the latter. I think the actors were thrilled to be in something Hollywood doesn’t make very often, nor well.
See it if you can for a change of pace given Hollywood’s current, predictable fare.
Alamo Extras: A BritCom parody of Poirot; Trailer for Murder, She Said; Dogs dressed up as people in a mystery; commercial for the Agatha Christie Hour on A&E; Tutorial on the characters from Knives Out; Rian Johnson telling Alamo his favorites movies that inspired Knives Out:
- Death on the Nile
- Evil under the Sun
- Last of Sheila
- Sleuth (1972)