Glass Onion A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
Directed by Rian Johnson
Written by Rian Johnson
Starring Daniel Craig, Janelle Monae, Edward Norton, Kate Hudson
Release Date November 23rd, 2022
Netflix Release Date December 23rd, 2022
Years ago, movies were home to terrific detective characters. For whatever reason, the character of the independent investigator fell out of favor. Perhaps its because independent detectives have rarely been relevant in real life since the days of Humphrey Bogart, or the rise of television gave detectives a more generous home, movie detectives had been in decline for years until 2019 when filmmaker Rian Johnson reminded us how much fun the detective genre can be with his ingenious mystery, Knives Out.
With the release of Glass Onion A Knives Out Mystery, we have proof positive that the detective genre is back with a vengeance. This mystery finds the world's greatest detective Benoit Blanc languishing in the boredom of the pandemic before having his intellect revived with a new case that gets him back into the world. Delivering another career best performance, Daniel Craig gives Benoit Blanc a life and charm that echoes through the history of detectives on film, a brand new colorful icon for this beloved sub-genre.
A group of 'friends' have received an invitation to the private island of a billionaire named Miles (Edward Norton). All of the guests are Miles' long time friends but they are also people whose livelihoods and financial well being are linked to the benevolence of Miles and his bank roll. In this group is a regularly cancelled former model, Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), a superstar Twitch Streamer turned Mens Rights Advocate, Duke (Dave Bautista), his model girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline), a liberal Gubernatorial candidate, Claire (Kathryn Hahn), and a boundary pushing scientest, Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.) who may have completely solved our environmental crisis or may be about to blow up the planet.
Interestingly, and quite unexpectedly, another guest for this murder mystery party is Miles' former business partner and best friend, Cassandra (Janelle Monae). This is quite surprising as Cassandra had just sued Miles after ending their business partnership. Miles stole her idea and used his vast army of lawyers to destroy Cassandra while convincing their mutual friends, the other guests at this party, to lie for him in court. So that's awkward.
Even more interestingly, who invited Benoit Blanc? Benoit received the same strange puzzle box invitation that everyone else did and yet, Miles did not know that the world's greatest detective had been invited to his murder mystery themed weekend. This adds to the layers upon layers of mystery and intrigue that writer-director Rian Johnson has built into this exquisite mystery. But this is no mere mystery, Glass Onion A Knives Out Mystery is also hilariously funny. This group of brilliant actors get laughs effortlessly and organically, never too broad or unrealistically.
Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media.
