Knives Out

After a trying Thanksgiving at work, I caught this murder mystery instead of going straight home. I've heard the rave reviews of course, but still worried that it would be a disappointment like Kenneth Branagh's horrible take on Poirot. But to my relief, Knives Out was great and funny and clever. I will complain a little bit that that the sole black character didn't have much to do, simply interviewing suspects and reacting to Daniel Craig's outlandish private detective Benoit Blanc. A thankless role. Maybe also there could have been some color in the Thrombey family, because there were characters who had married into the family that could have been non-white. But maybe their whiteness was the point, with one grandchild actually being called a Nazi, while others keep harping on illegal immigration in front of Marta, whose mother is undocumented. (All of the family keep giving different countries of origin for Marta, while claiming they love her like family and will take care of her.)

Anyway, aside from the non-diverse cast perpetuating the idea that cozy mysteries have to take place in predominately white, wealthy settings, it was a good mystery. Marta as a woman of color is given a prominent role as Harlan's nurse and the sole beneficiary of his will. Her gimmicky quirk of always vomiting when she lies is part of the comedy, but is also a reason for Blanc to trust her and treat her as his "Watson" while investigating. The old mansion is full of creepy statuary and puppets, reminding me of the house full of macabre tricks in Sleuth, and there's a chair with knives displayed around it akin to the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones. We also get references to other whodunits like Murder She Wrote and Marta's sister watching another mystery on her laptop. We're all hungry for a good murder. Overall, the film reminded me of The Last of Sheila, too, which I recently saw on TV.


At first I feared the story was not so much a whodunit as a "how you catch em" like Columbo's mysteries where you know the killer but want to see if the detective is clever enough to solve it. But my fear was unfounded. Eventually there is blackmail, arson, and murder, and the story twists back around to be a satisfying whodunit. I was able to guess an appearance of "Chekov's knife" and a "blank page with invisible ink" mere seconds before those reveals, while other things genuinely surprised me. I was glad also that it wasn't somehow all a trick with Harlan faking his death in order to test the reactions of his family or something like that (which was a plot in one episode of Murder She Wrote). Anyway, I liked it as an update on a traditional Golden Age mystery. I wish this guy Rian Johnson was in charge of an Agatha Christie update instead of that hack Branagh.