Glass Onion review: The Knives Out sequel loses its sharp edge

A lot has been done together to create Rian Johnson’s 2019 whodunit knife out hit. Like Johnson’s loving magpie eye for abandoned genres, the time is ripe for picking. Or the spectacle of Daniel Craig unleashing as camp detective Benoît Blanc, cheekily gun-flying at the end of his tenure as James Bond. And then there is the immaculate casting from top to bottom. Don Johnson is a mean, useless, gold-digging husband, because of course he is!

But perhaps the most important factor in the film’s success is the perfection of its Pinterest-ready mood boards, which are rendered in its stunning production design, costumes, and cinematography. Thick autumn knits and sharp tweed overcoats. Jamie Lee Curtis is sparkling in fuchsia and topped with a shock of white hair. Chris Evans snarls his 1970s BMW and beloved sweater with cables. Overcast skies and low cool his November light. Knife halo as decoration. A universe of spooky tidbits, all packed into a creaky New England mansion that reminds you badly of the Old World. (But, as Rian Johnson’s script spitefully points out, it was purchased from a Pakistani real estate tycoon in the 1980s.) It’s a clever, funny film that keeps its self-consciousness at an appropriate distance, and its Style is spot on.

Consider a moodboard for a Netflix-funded sequel. Glass Onion: A Knife Out Mystery, which again explores mind games and the foulest murders of the most privileged people. Azure sea and sky under the scorching Greek sun. Personalized cocktail glass and smartphone with chime. Glass sculptures and gizmos adorn the fantastic Teckhi Palace, complete with a giant onion-shaped cupola. Large prints, loose linen, neckerchiefs, sun hats and handguns attached to codpieces.

that is all glass onion It’s brighter, louder, and more extroverted than the first. knife outIts themes and fashion flirt with bold, cartoonish silliness.This time, Johnson is aiming for big ideas and big laughs. knife out Targeting the defensive pretense of inheritance, glass onion Mock new money desperate peacocks in a world of tech billionaires, influencers and epiphany politicians. But as before, the gentleman Benoît Blanc is here to remove these people’s illusions with comical courtesy.

Also, as before, glass onion It starts off as a murder mystery with seemingly no actual murders. The death of crime writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer). knife out Investigated at various times as a suicide or an accident, Johnson took delight in saving the nature of the crime and the identity of the offender to the end.

Only a play this time. Miles Bronn (Edward Norton), who has made an unimaginable amount of money from an obscure tech platform called Alpha, has invited a motley group of friends to his private Greek island for an annual reunion. . He calls them his “disruptors”: the stressed liberal politician (Kathryn Hahn), the science genius who works at Bronn (Leslie Odom Jr.), the gruff meninist Twitch streamer ( Dave Bautista), a crazy former model (Kate Hudson) has a burgeoning line of fancy sweatpants in 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to work from home. I’m here.

Image: Netflix

The arrival of Andy Bland (Janelle Monáe), who co-founded Alpha with Miles, surprises everyone, but he relentlessly kicks him out of the company. Everyone seems equally surprised when Benoit Blanc is invited along. Blanc is also included. But at least World’s Greatest Detective fits the theme, as Bronn plans a murder mystery party where he’ll be a “victim”. — but of course someone has actually died and someone is interested in making sure a celebrity detective is on the scene.

johnson is deep Admirer of Agatha Christie‘s classic mystery, the gamesmanship of its construction just isn’t enough for him. He feels the need to play games in the game of whodunit itself. What if the killer hadn’t committed the murder? What if the victim wasn’t the target? Rather than kick off his ruse with a conclusion, as he did, knife outof glass onion, he makes a big bet and lifts it along the way. At that point, he flips the script, rewinds the plot, and plays it all over again, casting all the events and many characters in a new light.

Structurally, it’s quite a sleight of hand. Some of the devices he uses to pull it off are pretty old-fashioned, but the choice seems appropriate for such winking, theatrical enterprise, and the work is sound. All pieces is a good fit. However, gambling has another result. The perspective shift adds depth and richness to some characters, while flattening others. Crucially, the conventions of the genre require Johnson to reveal in the conclusion to match the twist surprises he engineered along the way, but when we get there, it turns out he’s run out of options, That’s how it should be in return.

Photo: John Wilson/Netflix

By then, though, Johnson is more interested in taking down an entire world of characters in the flames of glory than fingering a killer. knife out, made in the immigration-obsessed Trump era, he asks whose country America is anyway and chooses sides in a stunning closing shot.of glass onion, created amidst the dissociation of COVID, he lashes out at a series of easy targets left and right. Big tech utopian fantasies, liberal political hypocrisy, and online image-making overweight. It’s a confusing one, embodied in Carreau’s herd of caricatures as he struggles to establish a natural kinship.

But they’re still popping off the screen, backed by Jenny Egan’s extravagant costumes. will be Hudson is hilarious as Birdie, the glamorous idiot queen whose tweets have been canceled so many times that she doesn’t allow her assistant to touch her phone. It digs the deep seams of Dutchness without compromising its immense charisma. It’s a pleasure to have him back at the center of big, glitzy Hollywood productions and to remember what a star he was. , shines with a realism that others cannot touch.

This is also the movie that sees Daniel Craig play in us In the bath with Angela Lansbury and Stephen Sondheim, who died on Zoom. While the film riffs on Craig’s macho Bond image in a funny and surprising way, both Craig and Johnson veer away from Agatha Christie’s famous detective Hercule Poirot to his parodies, and they’re more of a trope. Pushing the snazzy detective in a more cartoonish direction, with his pronounced Southern drawl. descendants, pink pantherInspector Clouseau. Unlike Peter Sellers’ dupe cop, Benoît Blanc isn’t an idiot, but he looks like a bit of a playful figure when he descends into the pool wearing a striped two-piece bathing suit and cravat. .

does that matter? Not really.Great detectives like Peter Falk’s Columbo — Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne will soon pay homage in their detective series poker face — no need to have hidden depth. They are the keys that turn locks, open doors, and shed light on our failures. You don’t have to know why they do it, but we ask you to do it with style. glass onion I certainly do.

Glass Onion: A Knife Out Mystery It opens in limited release on November 23rd and debuts on Netflix on December 23rd.