We often enjoy going to the movies on "Black Friday," and this year's post-Thanksgiving movie was GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2022).
The film was a sequel to
KNIVES OUT (2019), which I saw for the first time earlier this month; in GLASS ONION Daniel Craig returns in his role as Southern detective Benoit Blanc alongside an entirely new cast of characters.
The movie is only scheduled to run theatrically for a single week, after which it will begin streaming on Netflix around Christmas.
As the movie begins, a group of old friends who consider themselves "disruptors" in their various fields are invited to a luxury weekend on a Greek island with ultra-wealthy Miles Bron (Edward Norton).
The guests include a politician (Kathryn Hahn of WANDAVISION), a model/fashion designer (Kate Hudson), a scientist (Leslie Odom Jr.), a YouTube personality (Dave Bautista), and Miles' ex-partner (Janelle Monae).
Also along for the weekend is Benoit Blanc, who is disconcerted to learn that despite receiving an invitation, he was not actually invited by Miles.
The highlight of the weekend is intended to be a game in which Miles is "murdered" and his guests solve the mystery...no one will be surprised to learn that someone turns up dead for real, leaving Blanc to solve the crime.
I'll leave off with the plot there so as not to share any spoilers, but in a nutshell I found GLASS ONION quite entertaining. Truth to tell, I think I enjoyed it more than KNIVES OUT, which was fun but had a few problematic issues, including a plot device that made no sense, a gross "tell" that a character is lying, and the gratuitous exploitation of a teen character.
GLASS ONION, on the other hand, is pure Agatha Christie high style, with a "unique" detective solving a mystery among the rich and famous. At first the Poirot-like Blanc seems to be surprisingly dumb, perhaps rusty after being locked down due to Covid, but things soon get more interesting as onion-like layers of plot and character are gradually peeled back.
The actors are all quite good as their "types," with particular kudos to Monae (
HIDDEN FIGURES) as the spurned partner no one can believe has had the temerity to actually show up for the weekend. Monae is powerful as a woman who initially seems quietly mysterious, and she only gets better from there.
There are also some fun cameos which won't be revealed here; these scenes caused some nice chuckles as well as a bit of emotion, as a couple of them have left us since filming their scenes.
It's not a perfect film; like Christie mysteries, the characters are more chess pieces than truly fleshed-out characters, though the actors do their best with the material. I was also really expecting a tag scene to explain away something startling which happens in the final action sequence, and its absence made the film a tad less believable.
That said, the script by director
Rian Johnson has some fun stuff in it, including commentary on celebrity and those who are, as they say, "very online." The writing for Craig, Monae, and Hudson's characters is particularly good; Hudson is strongly reminiscent of her mother, Goldie Hawn, in this one, and in my view that's only to the good.
Overall the film is a solid effort, and I had an enjoyable afternoon watching it.
GLASS ONION runs a long but fairly well-paced 140 minutes. It was filmed by
Steve Yedlin.
Parental advisory: This film is rated PG-13. It's not particularly graphic or foul-mouthed -- the original film seemed worse in both respects -- but at the same time there's enough that this film is not for children.
This month Turner Classic Movies celebrates the centennial of the birth of Ava Gardner by honoring her as the December Star of the Month.
