Dead Man’s Wake: Mysterious Knives Out review – Josh O’Connor excels in another deadpan delight | film

RIan Johnson’s delicious new film Knives Out is a box of chocolates: absolutely delicious in the first layer and… well, absolutely delicious in the second. Daniel Craig returns as private investigator Benoit Blanc, in a slightly more serious mode than before, with not as many snarky one-liners and quirky antics, but sporting a longer hairstyle and a nicely tailored three-piece suit.

Blank arrives at a Catholic church in upstate New York to investigate the sensational murder of its head priest, Monsignor Jefferson Weeks, a ferocious clergyman played by Josh Brolin, who rattles off his reactionary views from the pulpit. (That title “Monsignor” could only have been bestowed by a pope by coincidence: presumably Benedict XVI or John Paul II, not liberals like Francis or Leo The atheist Planck confronts the young priest, a cultural clash in worldview that leads to an extraordinary confrontation with resurrection itself.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Monsignor Weeks was beloved by a close-knit group of eccentric and troubled parishioners, a funny, cartoonish group with some resemblance to characters from the first Knives Out film. Wheelchair-using cellist Simone Vivian (Caille Spaeny) has an illness like Jacqueline du Pré; Failed science fiction novelist Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) attempts to turn his endless subgenre into a masterpiece; Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) is a lawyer, whose stepson Cy Draven (Darryl McCormack) is a Trump influencer; Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), a doctor who loses his battle with the bottle; And church housekeeper Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) is fiercely loyal to the Monsignor and is in turn beloved by groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church). In the end, there is a motive for both.

It’s a very brilliant collection of acting talent, with everyone at the top of their game, and Johnson teases us with references to many of the “locked room” detective mysteries, including those by John Dixon Carr, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Agatha Christie; They are probably classic texts whose playful purpose here is to divert and mislead. As with the previous two Knives Out films, the enjoyment, for me, is most intense before the actual murder itself, when we see the characters dueling and a spark ignited unencumbered by murder and suspicion. There are funny scenes when Monsignor Weeks insists that poor Jude hear his confession, which turns out to be a disturbingly detailed series of masturbatory episodes. Judd’s confession is a surprisingly effective counter-reaction.

Then we get the murder, and then…well, it’s still quite entertaining, but perhaps it should be viewed more as a deadpan absurdist ensemble comedy than a whodunit. It is not really a matter of misrepresentation or counter-misrepresentation, where the finger of suspicion is passed from one person to another; It gets more complicated and weird. As with the previous Knives Out films, the characters aren’t actually nearly as interesting or deadly as they are. The inner core of the suspects emerges and their guilt gradually reveals itself in the end, rather than being obscured by the final revelation. What fun it was though, with cracking turns from everyone and O’Connor first among equals. Could he be the star of the decade?