Knives Out by Rian Johnson breaks the mystery and rebuilds it

Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our detailed reviews of festival films, glimpses of virtual reality and other special event publications. This criticism comes from the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival.

It should come as no surprise that director Rian Johnson can handle a mystery of murder. Before entering the world of franchising with Star Wars: The Last Jedi and before he was lined up to create his own Star wars trilogy, he launches his career in the cinema with the formidable neo-black 2005 Brick, which channels the familiar rhythms and language of 1940s crime fiction into a modern California high school. Johnson's latest film, the whole family, mystery comedy Knives released, is far from BrickThe mashup genre of cheeky kind. But he similarly recognizes the story and tropes of the mystery murders, while telling his own story.

The difference is that where Brick is an ode to Dashiell Hammett and his disciples, Knives released is a mix of a mystery of domestic murder focused on the details of Agatha Christie and a twisty whodunit of Alfred Hitchcock. The results are not as innovative and surprising as Brickbut thanks to a lively distribution and an ambitious and unusual construction, they are still fun.

WHAT IS GENDER?

Sleuth murder-mystery. Christopher Plummer plays Harlan Thrombey, a resounding thriller writer whose home is filled with devious and self-righteous parents. When he came back dead the next morning, after a controversial family reunion – a meeting where he had shouted matches or clashes with several Thrombey – the police investigation. But the chief detective, Lieutenant Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield), seems suspicious of Harlan's throat cut as a particularly dramatic form of suicide. Private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) thinks otherwise.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

This is in principle the question of who killed Harlan and why. Craig plays White with a trailing southerner accent and a warm patience unlike his haunted and hateful James Bond. Johnson sets up the investigation and the characters at the same time, with a fantastic interview montage establishing the tensions within the household.

The gentle Nurse of Harlan, Marta (Ana de Armas, Joi de Blade Runner 2049) who vomits uncontrollably if she lies – a bad state of health to have during a mystery murder where each person for whom she works has some sort of secret. Around her are Harlan's adult children, their spouses and their adult children, with characters played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Riki Lindhome, Katherine Langford, Jaeden Martell, and in particular Chris Evans, star of Marvel Cinematic Universe, as black sheep and disruptive in residence of the family. Johnson's script inevitably reveals, in the manner of Agatha Christie, that virtually everyone in the house had at least one motive for murder. The only question is whodunit.

Photo: Lionsgate

WHAT IS IT THAT IS REALLY SURE?

It's mainly about playing with conventions and gender structure. Very early, Johnson provides a sequence that covers the how and why of Harlan's death. Of course, there are some minor omissions, and anyone who automatically spends time watching movies trying to get ahead of a screenplay, is going to wonder how important these omissions are. With the mystery apparently solved, Knives released asks why the story continues again?

Part of the answer lies in the details – the grievances of everyone with Harlan and their relationships with each other. This is part of their individual responses to his death. There is a strong comic tendency throughout Knives released it's like nothing so much as Jonathan Lynn's 1985 film Index, with exaggerated characters and caricatures running around them shouting their agendas. (At one point, one of the investigators ironically said that Harlan's huge baroque house was full of weapons: "Look around. Index board. But above all, it is the structural experience of apparently solving a mystery murder in the first act, and then seeing how it affects the other two acts.

IS IT GOOD?

He lacks Hitchcockian tension or dignity at the height of Christie, but it's funny, surprising and intriguing in the way he flips the usual mystery-murder script. As a central character, Marta is a bit bland: de Armas makes her friendly and soulful, but she is so sincere and well-intentioned that she is automatically less pretentious on the screen than any Thrombey. After a semi-trailer campaign centered on the overall bargain, it's easy to want much more of Curtis, Shannon and Evans facing the family legacy, rather than leaving Marta embarrassed by her boss's death.

But perhaps it's because Johnson stays true to the action, where Marta plays a central role and does not spend too much time on superfluous character comedy. For such a sprawling image with such a large distribution, Knives released ends up feeling thin and efficient as he jumps from one revelation to another, and goes from calm personal confrontations to what a character calls "the most stupid pursuit of all time" . The character's activity is lively – Evans clearly has the taste to play egocentric and selfish captain after eight years spent in Captain America, impeccable cleanliness – but the film speaks more of the infinite sense of discovery while the clues s & # They stack and each new scene changes the composition of the previous one.

And Johnson finds a way to lift and then unfreeze other essentials of the mystery genre of the house, including reading the will (featuring Frank Oz as Harlan's lawyer) and the inevitable "detective scene that brings everything together." the world to reveal the killer ". He pushes repeatedly to what looks like a convention, and then deviates rails.

With this in mind, Craig appears as the most valuable player in the mix, largely because his amusement that draws the attraction by the way the story unfolds gives the public such a clear pattern of his own reaction . White has no idea who hired him to investigate – he was detained via a note and a money-filled envelope – and he clearly sees this mystery as another fun and amusing quirk in an already strange story. While he interprets the character as a kind of Sherlock Holmes in the South, any unsatisfactory superiority and any casual assumption of his own intellect, one of the many mysteries of the film is to know if he is a good investigator or, as Marta said, at some point. terrible

The kind dictates White should be a world-class thinker and deductor. But nothing can be taken for granted in Knives releasedexcept a satisfactory conclusion that sums up the details. This is one of Johnson's rare strengths at the conference, but it's necessary. This kind of very lively game is exciting because of its unpredictability, but it would not help if the mystery itself was not built so strictly. That's a lot, at least Knives released has in common with Brick.

WHAT SHOULD WE EVALUATE?

There was a R due to a bit of blood, a little pot of tobacco and "language everywhere", which means that there are blasphemies. For people who do not share the rigid rules of the MPAA regarding four-letter words, a PG-13 would suffice.

HOW CAN I WATCH EFFECTIVELY?

Knives released The theatrical release will take place on November 27, 2019.