Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson does it again with this breezy whodunit sequel
Daniel Craig and Janelle Monáe try to peel back the layers on Rian Johnson's Glass Onion.
Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) isn’t dealing well with the pandemic. A long isolation period has left him spending long hours in his bathtub, skyping with people, and generally spiraling. He’s decidedly terrible at fake mysteries — don’t ask him to play Among Us — what he wants is a real whodunit to sink his teeth into.
Luckily for him, an ornate puzzle box arrives at his door.
Puzzle boxes just like that have also been delivered to an odd group of rich and famous people. Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) is a former supermodel who can’t stop reminiscing about the glories of her past and saying vaguely racist things on Twitter. Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) is a men’s rights activist who open-carries a gun and sells alpha male supplements on his YouTube channel. Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) is the eco-conscious governor of Connecticut. Scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.) is the only person who seems excited to solve the mysteries of the box. And Andie Brand (Janelle Monáe) has a rather strong reaction to the arrival of the package.
Though the group seems random, it’s not. These five people are all friends with tech genius and billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), who sent the boxes. He’s a big fan of playing games and inviting his friends on elaborate vacations. And everyone who solves the puzzle box is invited to his private island for a weeklong excursion.
Why is Benoit now included in this odd, but infamous group? Well, that’s the first mystery he’ll have to solve.
It’s challenging to discuss a movie like Glass Onion in a review because many of the funniest and most interesting bits are spoilers. We’ll muddle through with a spoiler-free review, but keep in mind that the film’s best gags are best left as a surprise. The biggest mystery of the Knives Out franchise might be how writer/director Rian Johnson keeps coming up with plots that are fun brain teasers and sharp satire.
This time around, Johnson is still drawing from mystery legends like Agatha Christie, but we’ve moved from the locked-room murder to the exotic locale whodunit. Think of Glass Onion as Rian Johnson’s Death on the Nile. By riffing on the location as well as the world around it, Johnson opens the Knives Out world just a little more. We learn more about the personal lives of our characters, and most interestingly Benoit Blanc.
Arguably, Johnson is doing a better job of honoring the storytelling of Agatha Christie than Kenneth Branagh, who keeps adapting those Poirot movies that you catch on HBOMax on a rainy Sunday. Johnson’s writing is sharper, his shooting style more interesting, and his wry sense of humor more entertaining. Even his cast seems to be having more fun.
But much like Knives Out, the identity of the killer is a secondary concern. Johnson is much more preoccupied with sketching out hilarious caricatures of the rich and infamous for you to laugh at as they run about in mortal terror. This year’s crop is particularly amusing with Norton doing his best Elon Musk impersonation and Bautista camping it up as a slightly less annoying version of Andrew Tate. Unlike the sweet but irascible murder victim in Knives Out, these characters won’t be pulling at your heartstrings if and when they perish.
And that may be the one flaw at the core of Glass Onion: It doesn’t have as much heart. It’s all well and good to point and laugh at ridiculously wealthy people as they act like jerks and get what’s coming to them, but it also lowers the stakes of the crime. These are absolutely the kinds of people who would respond to a pandemic lockdown by caterwauling “Imagine” in their mansions and believing they did something charitable and uplifting. If a multi-millionaire dies on a billionaire’s island, is anyone upset, or are we all just trying to make the best joke about it on Twitter?
Though the emotional stakes are not as high, the production values are. Johnson clearly got a decent budget from Netflix and spent it on some great set pieces. Norton’s entire island is one big sight gag after another. Keep your eyes peeled because the designs get progressively sillier.
The other highlight of Glass Onion is Johnson’s ability to assemble a brilliant cast and allow them to have a blast while shooting. Craig, who has finally broken the shackles of Bond, is hilarious as Blanc. The accent has gotten even more ridiculous, with Craig sounding like Poirot as written by Tennessee Williams, but the performance is just as strong as ever. Hudson, who can often seem a bit low-effort in films, really sinks her teeth into her vapid fading star who’s reduced to designing athleisure clothing. She’s so casually cruel and self-absorbed that she steals almost every scene she’s featured in.
The real surprise of the film, however, is Monáe. She’s called on to deliver both comedy and drama and slips between the extremes nicely. She’s also a great foil for Craig who seems to work well when paired with a strong female costar.
So far, though nominally mysteries, the Knives Out series feels like being invited to a swanky party where we get to watch our favorite celebrities make fun of themselves. It’s not a bad way to spend an evening.
If you missed the theatrical run for Glass Onion, try to get a group together to watch it on Netflix. This is a movie that will benefit from group reactions and the occasional gasp or witty remark. Think of it this way: avoid a murder at your family gathering by watching one constructed by Rian Johnson. I promise it’s more fun.
Verdict: Rian Johnson crafts another clever whodunit that skewers the ultra-rich and keeps us laughing as the bodies drop.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is available Dec. 23 on Netflix.
