Knives Out

Or: Legacy Thought

It’s harder than one my think to pull off a good whodunit. It would seem simple enough: throw shady set of characters (in this case, scions of renowned murder mystery author Harlan Trombey (Christopher Plumber) into atmospheric location (isolated country house crammed with creepy nicknacks). Add corpse or two to taste (Harlan again), done in by mysterious means (apparent suicide in the middle of the night). Add garnish of quirky detective (loquacious southern variety Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) “last of the gentlemen sleuths.”) Simmer and serve. But the devil is in the details, and the intricacies of a mystery, the dovetailing of motive and plot and the ability to keep an audience second guessing. There’s always a chefs special jot of secret something.

In Rian Johnson’s rococo homage the something is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas). A private nurse and true friend to the ailing Harlan, Marta is of all “family” attendant on the night of the murder the one who comes to the crime scene with a pure heart, and a queasy stomach. In another, less artful film Marta would be the first or final girl, a saintly victim or a terrorized plaything. But not here! Here de Armas is the heroine of her story and much, much more embroiled in the games of Harlan’s family than even she realizes. Equal parts soft and steely, humorous and thrilling, de Armas is an actor for all seasons. She dances a fine pad a deus alone with Plumber (who meets her charm, too goofballs joking around a go board) but comes into her own on her own spring path, lips pursed and heart hammering, a woman who’d rather be saving lives having to think like a killer.

Craig is a more amusing but less interesting individual, a detective both bumbling and gimlet eyed, poured over with a thick southern gravy and gleefully stuffed with Johnson’s most ponderous dialog (to paraphrase: “This case has a hole in it. A donut. But the solution that would fit that hole, a donut hole in the donut hole. And yet we see that this donut hole is not in fact a donut hole but merely a smaller donut with a hole of its own!”) Other performances of note include Jamie Lee Curtis as the eldest daughter Linda, grand of pronouncement and tender of heart, Michael Shannon as the half-finished youngest son Walter, moving with a kind of clipped-winged menace, and Chris Evans as Hugh Ransom, the spoiled grandson with a sharp taste but too unpleasant and alluring and motive-filled to be the obviously obvious suspect (with extra appearance by Frank Oz as an officious attorney).

The film feels more like a pet project than a gripping piece of art, Johnson inviting us along on a jaunt rather than setting down the pace of a film you’d want to return to over and over again. But it’s a well crafted story all the same. Lots of throwaway lines come back with thunderous echoes, small jagged pieces that cut at the beginning of the movie tumbled to smoothness by its clothes. It also has an understated but unswerving poetical tone too: the extended Trombey’s falling into that other category of mystery fiction Nasty Rich Racist White People By Water. Contemptuous of “the help” though assured of their paternal affection (in one lovely cringeworth moment Linda’s husband Richard (Don Johnson) hoiks Marta to the fore as an object lesson about “good” immigrants and unconsciously hands her his empty plate to dispose of), the family awaits for Harlan’s death and the tide of wealth that is expected to float all boats. It’s a nice lesson in Legacy thought, the narrowing, feral-making thought that runs through patriarchy, racism, and crooked-minded capitalism: that respect and good fortune is a diminishing rehouses and therefore must pass only to me and mine and never be shared with us and ours. Taken to the extreme, as it is by the killer, it has sickening fascist tones, and double highlights the trope that murderously hastening a legacy, killing over an inheritance is perhaps the premier staple of the whodunit. But despite the assurance of an all-star cast, it’s de Armas’s movie through and through: giving her a chance to play criminal and detective, ingenue and Watson, each to the hilt.