Movie Review: Knives Out (English)

Entertaining and twisty, and a contemporary spin on old-fashioned whodunnits — or, an Agatha Christie locked room mystery set in the era of smartphones — Looper-helmer Rian Johnson's Knives Out is a doozy, a sardonic thriller that keeps you guessing as more characters are introduced in the aftermath of the death of the legendary crime novelist and family patriarch Harlan Thrombey the morning after his 85th birthday. When famed Kentucky private detective Benoit Blanc (a scenery-chewing Daniel Craig) shows up at the gorgeous, antiquated mansion to sleuth his way to the killer, what's ruled as a cut-and-dry case of suicide slowly evolves into a complex web of lies and deceit as it becomes apparent the dead man's surviving "loved ones" all hold a motive for murder.

Deftly stacking up clues atop one another, Johnson cooks up an indelible, stylish crowd-pleaser that starts out like any other Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr adaptation ("The game's afoot, eh, Watson?," Blanc exclaims at one point). Peel back a few layers, though, and the story tackles immigration politics and entitlement through the lens of a trad murder mystery, serving up a sharp, thoughtful blend of thrills and social satire. For those ardent Christie fans out there, the counter-twists and the "final" denouement may not be exactly a shocker, but that doesn't take away the fact that Knives Out is equal parts goofy, self-aware but also old-school. Rarely has there been a closing shot (watch out for Harlan's "my house, my rules, my coffee" mug) this gleeful and satisfying!