Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - 2022
Updated: Jan 6, 2023
This review contain spoilers.
Perhaps it was due to the bright beaming sun, the bronzed bodies, or the inviting surf and sand of the Grecian shoreline, but the most ready metaphor that came to mind when viewing Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is an odd one. Given the moneyed characters of the most assorted nature one could ever find gathered, and the imbecilic tycoon at the head of the train, you could be forgiven for expecting an analogy of a satirical, “eat the rich” nature. But no, my brain, for whatever reason, found itself in the world of athletics. Volleyball, in fact. More specifically, the tripartite nature of the sport at its highest level, where bump leads to set and finally spike.
Before continuing down that road, we must pause a moment to expand on an idea above. See, what the original Knives Out gets so RIGHT is precisely what I’ve just mentioned, namely an incisive critique of a wealthy family and the different social classes and structures emanating out from that central conceit. It’s telling that I didn’t call this to mind with Glass Onion, but really not all that surprising. The comedy is simply too broad and shallow this time around. In fact, the connection between these characters from so many different walks of life seems tenuous at best. But, honestly, it just really doesn’t matter.
This is because the film soars when it is simply frolicking in the sandbox that Rian Johnson has sketched so exquisitely. Put differently, Glass Onion is most surefooted as a comedy for the masses, full of delicious one liners, a recurring bum who pops up at all the right times, and incredibly winning turns from a few stars that we’re happy to welcome back to our screens. So, we have the shallow but somehow lovable Birdie Jay, played so delightfully by Kate Hudson (“WHAT IS REALITY?!”) Or the malaprop king himself, Miles Bron, which features Edward Norton dialing up all the naturally hubristic aspects of his real-life persona yet scaling back any of his smartest-man-in-the-room winsomeness in the process.
All this to say, Johnson’s picture is nimble and light on its feet for the entire “bump” (i.e. setup). A little before halfway through, however, the narrative takes a hard turn and expands its scope. At the time, I was not sure how I felt about the rug being pulled out from under me, but I was certainly along for the ride. In hindsight, this may have been when the film began to head south.
Fortunately for us all, before this recalibration, Glass Onion gets a little meta for all of us Agatha Christie fans. This occurs in a delectable sequence where Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, who arrived under the auspices of needing to solve a murder mystery, quickly locates and dispels each staged clue in a matter of minutes. I enjoyed these more self-critical moments of the genre itself. Perhaps the example par excellence of this is another scene where Janelle Monae’s Helen and Benoit are discussing the, shall we say, shortcomings of the game Clue and its box-checking method. All of this is just very cleverly written and performed.
Speaking of Monae, thank God we had her as “setter” this time around (you still with me on the volleyball analogy?) Once the story backs up in time and zooms out in location, we begin to suspect that Rian Johnson may have had different motives all along. Perchance it is that solving this riddle is not really the heart of the matter after all. So, we get another succession of sequences which are as crafty as what has gone before. Now, not only is Craig’s character giving us glorious line readings with a far-too-catchy-to-be-real Southern drawl, we also retread key conversations with an amateur sleuth hiding in the wings. I’d have to watch it all again (I have no strong desire to, as we’ll soon get to), but it would seem that Johnson does a pretty terrific job blocking these moments to hide Monae’s eavesdropping presence.
So, I’ve mentioned the wily setup and pristine locale, the humorous asides and showy performances (and I didn’t even speak of Bautista, Cline, and several other hilarious cameos). Yet I’ve hinted at weaker things to come. To return to the central image, if this film has one hell of a bump and an interesting twist in the set (second act), the “spike” lets us down COMPLETELY. To put it bluntly - what a dud of a finale.
I understand that the whole “the killer was who we thought it was” schtick is a kind of deconstruction of the mystery film itself. A turning of the whodunit on its head. But in this case, the move is just entirely bereft of any narrative heft. Rian Johnson seems to be iconoclastically destroying his very construction, but when the commentary was so surface-y for the first hour plus, we can’t really expect this to have any real meaning now.
“Relax, Nick,” you say. “You’re thinking too much.” Fair enough. But if I just sit back and watch the glass shatter and the flames billow, I’m still left with a kind of empty feeling. If the purpose of the third act, in other words, is merely sardonic entertainment, I found it still wanting.
I’ll acknowledge that I prefer my murder stories with juicy reveals. It is, after all, what Christie and Doyle taught me as a kid. So perhaps the blame is all my own. Regardless, this one fell quite a bit short of the original in my estimation. It simply lacked some essential ingredient, and for my money I think it’s tied to this general notion of substituting crowd-pleasing merriment for biting class-aware wit. Even so, I largely enjoyed myself, and I’ll welcome Rian Johnson’s future puzzle box constructions with open arms.
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