Knives Out (2019)
Directed by Rian Johnson
When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is found dead at his estate just after his 85th birthday, the inquisitive and debonair Detective Benoit Blanc is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. From Harlan's dysfunctional family to his devoted staff, Blanc sifts through a web of red herrings and self-serving lies to uncover the truth behind Harlan's untimely death.
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58 films that influenced Knives Out
What critics say influenced Knives Out
Occasionally, a high-concept take on the whodunit will make a splash, as in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s adaptation of the cat-and-mouse two-hander Sleuth (1972), Sidney Lumet’s version of the mind-screwy meta-mystery Deathtrap (1982), or Johnathan Lynn’s manic screwball cult phenomenon Clue (1985).
He happens to be in the same business as the character played by Olivier in Sleuth, a successful crime novelist.
In a prominent place is a lifesize jolly-sailor dummy in homage to Sleuth, the play starring Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine (and later, the film starring Caine and Jude Law).
Johnson’s found the perfect old house in Massachusetts to set his murder mystery; he’s stacked it with props that directly reference, and may even be, the props from Sleuth (1972), which was also one of my favourite twisty movies as a kid; he’s engaged a fun-loving ensemble of glitterati; and then there’s his subversions, spins and extrapolations, none of which I’ll reveal, save one: the poster may imply a true ensemble, but this film has a protagonist and a star, and that’s Ana De Armas (who you hopefully remember fondly from Blade Runner 2049 as Ryan Gosling’s AI girlfriend).
The biggest drawback of Johnson’s Knives Out is its over-fondness for and insistence on paying respect to Agatha Christie-type mysteries (with the oddly exotic Blanc-Craig a stand-in for Hercule Poirot), Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and so forth.
The Michael Caine/Laurence Olivier “Sleuth” contains a joke about “a passing sheep rapist” that’s tonally and thematically similar to this movie’s reference to a character “joylessly masturbating to pictures of dead deer.”
Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is mystery writer whose immense success has subsidized the lives of his several children and grandchildren, all of whom have gathered at his ornate mansion which, as one notes, evokes the board game “Clue.”
Those words have paid for his mansion – “The guy practically lives in a Clue board,” notes Lakeith Stanfield’s police detective – and have bankrolled the activities of his three children, and their children.
In the same flavor as Clue, Murder on the Orient Express, and Deathtrap, you have a murder, a collection of characters, each of whom has a reason to have done it, and a sleuth investigation on the job.
Even better, he has an all-star cast eager to veritably feast on the scenery of his cinematic game of "Clue."
Cinematically located between Sleuth and Clue, it owes a great deal to both, though it's substantially less impressive than the former and noticeably better than the latter.
It’s like Johnson has mashed-up The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie with Ten Little Indians and added a dash of Clue for good measure, doing so with such likeably confident aplomb I can’t help but be impressed.
In the same flavor as Clue , Murder on the Orient Express , and Deathtrap , you have a murder, a collection of characters, each of whom has a reason to have done it, and a sleuth investigation on the job.
Writer-director Rian Johnson, still being nerd-roasted for his smash-hit Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, happily acknowledges his influences in constructing Knives Out—primarily Agatha Christie novels and the movies made from them (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun), as well as pictures like Gosford Park and the super-tricky Deathtrap.
Occasionally, a high-concept take on the whodunit will make a splash, as in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s adaptation of the cat-and-mouse two-hander Sleuth (1972), Sidney Lumet’s version of the mind-screwy meta-mystery Deathtrap (1982), or Johnathan Lynn’s manic screwball cult phenomenon Clue (1985).
Structurally, Johnson borrows from Sleuth and Deathtrap, two movies (both based on plays) that spring huge surprises every 30 minutes or so, defying the audience's presumptions.
The point, on the surface, is that Rian Johnson has given us a delicious mystery that riffs on Clue, Deathtrap, Columbo, Murder She Wrote, and even a little And Then There Were None.
Writer-director Rian Johnson ’s smart, wickedly funny whodunit plays like a game of Clue come to life—it's a jumped-up Agatha Christie thriller, a throwback to fiendishly clever puzzlers like Sleuth and Deathtrap, and a scathing satire of the hypocrisy and racism of the Trump era.
Movies like Murder by Death and The Last of Sheila doubled as playgrounds for seasoned character actors to ham it up to their hearts' content.
Toying with the classic elements of films like Clue, Murder By Death, and the countless Agatha Christie adaptations, Johnson crafts a clever puzzle that is relevant and political.
Knives Out captures the murder mystery genre as well as the more comedic films peppered throughout the genre, such as Clue and Murder by Death .
Yes, comparison to classics such as “Murder by Death” (1976) and “Clue” (1985) are apt.
The best mysteries ( Hound of the Baskervilles , Murder by Death , The Maltese Falcon ) have an effective con at play, a backdrop where only us and our leading character know an insidious game is afoot.
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Movies like Murder by Death and The Last of Sheila doubled as playgrounds for seasoned character actors to ham it up to their hearts' content.
The movie’s wit and energy hold your interest, but they don’t spark the pleasure of the unexpected, the thrill you felt in Laura, The Last of Sheila, Chinatown, The Sixth Sense, or the 1974 adaptation of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (not Kenneth Branagh’s inept remake), movies whose big reveals surprise you in their elegant simplicity.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Clue , Gosford Park , Murder by Death , all the Murder on the Orient Express es and The Last of Sheila , which I read about in a Rian Johnson tweet (and then actually watched; it’s a gem).
Prime examples include Herbert Ross’ cult classic The Last of Sheila (1973) and Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974).
That winking reference is one of many that range from the amusingly obvious — a quick glimpse of Angela Lansbury tapping away at a typewriter in a TV rerun of Murder, She Wrote , dubbed in Spanish — to craftier Easter eggs like having one major character sing a snippet of a song by Stephen Sondheim, who collaborated with Anthony Perkins on the script of another starry murder mystery, The Last of Sheila .
Also influential is Herbert Ross’s The Last of Sheila , in which James Coburn gathers the same guests who were at his house a year earlier when his wife died in a hit-and-run.
Enter Beniot Blanc, a world-famous super-sleuth played by Daniel Craig with the same kind of lip-smacking relish and hambone Southern accent he deployed to such revelatory effect in 2017’s “Logan Lucky.”
Over the years, Daniel Craig has shown considerable range when not playing 007 and his performance as Blanc deserves a place alongside that of Logan Lucky’s Joe Bang.
Much as Steven Soderbergh did in his Southern-fried heist picture Logan Lucky (2017), Johnson embeds a zeitgeist-tapping urgency within Knives Out’s more simplistic, twisty pleasures.
Craig uses a Southern accent, with more molasses in it than the one he used in Logan Lucky.
The Cheshire-born Craig obviously relishes the chance to get well away from James Bond and put on a showier version of the Southern-friend accent he adopted in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, and he’s very amusing, despite the character’s inherent preposterousness.
Yes, to call the performances by most of the cast hammy is to wildly understate the case—especially when it comes to Craig, whose latest take on a Southern accent (following “Logan Lucky”) would give even Foghorn Leghorm pause—but these are smart actors who know exactly what they are doing and who realize that there is a time and a place for quiet and deft underplaying and this particular film is not it.
It’s a kind of self-reflexive knowingness that never crosses the line into snark, but enables Johnson and his cast to fool around with their premise and make “Knives Out” feel like something a good deal fresher than say, Kenneth Branagh’s recent waxwork remake of “Murder on the Orient Express.”
Marta’s inability to fib is balanced against Benoit’s tendency toward wild, grandiloquent speculation, which Craig plays with just the right level of hearty, self-satisfied cheerfulness—he’s a better Hercule Poirot than Kenneth Branagh was in Murder on the Orient Express .
The best-known examples of the form – almost all of them Agatha Christie adaptations, such as And Then There Were None (1945), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978) – tend to be clever, star-studded little tchotchkes, eliciting a fleeting sensation of gratification but no lasting artistic impression.
The movie’s wit and energy hold your interest, but they don’t spark the pleasure of the unexpected, the thrill you felt in Laura, The Last of Sheila, Chinatown, The Sixth Sense, or the 1974 adaptation of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (not Kenneth Branagh’s inept remake ), movies whose big reveals surprise you in their elegant simplicity.
Prime examples include Herbert Ross’ cult classic The Last of Sheila (1973) and Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974).
Writer-director Rian Johnson, still being nerd-roasted for his smash-hit Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi , happily acknowledges his influences in constructing Knives Out —primarily Agatha Christie novels and the movies made from them ( Death on the Nile , Evil Under the Sun ), as well as pictures like Gosford Park and the super-tricky Deathtrap .
Beyond dependable Christie fare like Death on the Nile (1978) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017), there’s Clue (1985), Gosford Park (2001) and now, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
A true blue “cozy mystery,” Knives Out is an entertaining, if harmless, examination of class warfare, not dissimilar to Gosford Park .
It’s the best film of its kind since 2001’s Gosford Park.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Clue , Gosford Park , Murder by Death , all the Murder on the Orient Express es and The Last of Sheila , which I read about in a Rian Johnson tweet (and then actually watched; it’s a gem).
Murder mysteries in this vein (“Murder on the Orient Express,” “Gosford Park”) rely on a large cast of eccentrics to keep us engaged and guessing.
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Writer-director Rian Johnson, still being nerd-roasted for his smash-hit Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, happily acknowledges his influences in constructing Knives Out—primarily Agatha Christie novels and the movies made from them (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun), as well as pictures like Gosford Park and the super-tricky Deathtrap.
The best-known examples of the form – almost all of them Agatha Christie adaptations, such as And Then There Were None (1945), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978) – tend to be clever, star-studded little tchotchkes, eliciting a fleeting sensation of gratification but no lasting artistic impression.
On the surface, Knives Out is very much like one of the star-studded old movie adaptations of Christie novels like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express — the kind of films where the posters featured all the actors' faces in tiny boxes.
Beyond dependable Christie fare like Death on the Nile (1978) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017), there’s Clue (1985), Gosford Park (2001) and now, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
(Murder on the Orient Express was last year’s release and Death on the Nile won’t arrive until 2020.)
Before "Death on the Nile" is released late next year, I hope its makers take a lesson or two from Rian Johnson's fun, ingeniously witty "Knives Out," which not only puts a modern twist on the classic whodunit, but is also one of the most purely entertaining movies to come around all year.
The best-known examples of the form – almost all of them Agatha Christie adaptations, such as And Then There Were None (1945), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978) – tend to be clever, star-studded little tchotchkes, eliciting a fleeting sensation of gratification but no lasting artistic impression.
The point, on the surface, is that Rian Johnson has given us a delicious mystery that riffs on Clue, Deathtrap, Columbo, Murder She Wrote , and even a little And Then There Were None .
“And Then There Were None,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Murder by Death” and “Clue” all fit this mold, but while that tradition carried over to television with Jessica Fletcher, Columbo and Monk solving cases on a weekly basis, the genre has been sorely missing from movie theaters for many years.
Most likely René Clair’s “And Then There Were None,” adapted from Agatha Christie’s quintessential “Ten Little Indians.”
Kenneth Branagh and John Malkovich both rebooted Hercule Poirot in various vehicles, and the BBC produced two critically-acclaimed TV movies with And Then There Were None and The Witness for the Prosecution .
And “Knives Out” joins a prestigious canon of movie mysteries, alongside René Clair’s 1945 Christie adaptation “And Then There Were None” and excellent early Hitchcock 1938’s “The Lady Vanishes.”