Film: "Knives Out"
Writer/director Rian Johnson pays tribute to Agatha Christie in this dizzyingly fun, all-star whodunit with an incisive, modern twist.
When renowned crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead just after his 85th birthday, the debonair detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is mysteriously enlisted to investigate. Although the police (Lakeith Stanfield) initially rule the case a suicide, Blanc sifts through a heap of red herrings and self-serving lies to find the culprit among a star-studded cast of suspects (Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Ana de Armas).
The director of such acclaimed films as Brick and Looper, Johnson enjoys complicated material with lots of moving parts. Here, he delicately winds his impeccable cast like clockwork, unspooling a modern-day caper while also giving his performers ample room to play their succulent roles. Riotously funny yet packing a timely punch, Knives Out deftly honors and deconstructs the classic mystery genre to concoct a wholly original work in a class of its own. D: Rian Johnson, US, 2019, 2h10m