Knives Out: It's Thanksgiving After All

I suspect fowl play….

With Thanksgiving weekend quickly approaching, what better way to spend it than watching aristocrats murder each other, demean immigrants, and laugh casually about Hamilton? Rian Johnson, detective film wunderkind turned Disney animatronic, breaks away from his Sithlord captors in his newest directorial creation, Knives Out, a whodunit (at least from Johnson’s perspective). For some reason, the film’s marketing and distribution campaign crutches itself on the idea of Thanksgiving. Ever wanted to murder your relatives? Well, here you go. It’s gross enough to be ingenious. Ingenious and reflective of the drama that plays out on screen— the rich get richer and the poor are forced to subjugate themselves to it.

The central question of Knives Out is one surrounding the death of mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christoper Plummer). P.I. Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), sounding more like a certain Looney Tunes rooster than a southern gentleman detective, suspects… “fowl play”. Maybe they were going for the rooster… Regardless, in standard whodunit fashion, the crime’s suspects, Harlan’s family members, all have motive for doing the deed. Yet it is Harlan’s humble nurse, Marta (Ana de Armas), who sticks out like a sore thumb, her eyes flighty, lip quivering, with an allergic reaction to lying and an ethnicity heavily misconstrued by Thrombeys young and old. She, by a great margin, is the string holding this whodunit together. A thin string, yes, but a string nonetheless.

The rest of the cast consists of your standard whodunit offerings— Harlan’s tough-as-nails daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), his business shark of a son Walt (Michel Shannon), the money-grubbing daughter-in-law Joni (the fabulous Toni Collette), and, of course an excommunicated grandson aptly Ransom (Chris Evans). There are some other family members scattered about the game board, but in my opinion, Jaeden Martell’s buffoonish alt-right Hitler-Jugend, is a pièce de résistance of the film (one of the few). And with that, the players are set, the board is dressed, but something is still not quite right here... Even with all of these strings connecting the film’s dots, Knives Out feels unspooled. Much like Benoit Blanc, I suspect fowl play.

Rian Johnson’s whodunit falls victim to a few pitfalls that while not necessarily destructive, are rather annoying. His suspects, the Thrombey family, feel a little underused, neglected even. It is an eclectic cast of characters and archetypes, all performed to an electrifying degree, yet each suspect feels ornamental and nonintegral to the story being told. Although incredibly weighted in the forefront of the film, everyone minus Marta feels like they collect dust thought the film. Meanwhile, Detective Blanc and Marta following clues, dust for fingerprints, and examine evidence on their own. Although these two characters are the true crux of the film (Marta especially), you can’t stop asking yourself why the rest of the rogues gallery can’t join in on the fun, rather than being shoved in to fill time with racist one-liners and rich people humor. Suspects in the beginning of the film are shelved away after their quick introductions in order to focus on the story of one character. While reducing his characters to scattered comic relief and tidbits of social satire may have been Johnson’s intention, it comes across as somewhat non-investigative and uninvested in the full exploration of the great archetypes he has created for his murderous mansion.

The film is surprisingly streamlined. In most cases, this would be cause for praise, but the lack of twists and the absence of turns felt quite bizarre. The mystery of the film gets solved rather quickly. Thus, Knives Out, once a whodunit, mutates into a “howdunit”, focusing on technicalities of the crime, rather than the emotions and motives in play. Perhaps the biggest misstep that the film makes (and this is where the niceties stop) is that the answers to the posed questions are unforgivably obvious. If you were to guess the character(s) responsible for the crime after spending ten minutes within the Thrombey household, you would most likely land right on the money. It is a simple mystery, and the path is laid gently before the audience. The film ends with a strange feeling of dissatisfaction, not because the resolution is necessarily bad, but because we’ve already solved the case two hours ago. Tinkering with a possible modus operandi doesn't have the same thrill as catching the criminal.

Though there are some missteps taken, Knives Out wears its heart on its sleeve. Albeit, to the point of wearing it out at some points, but the good intentions put forth by its story ring loud and true. It’s just a shame that the film can’t stand on its intentions alone. After Brick, Looper, the Star Wars films, and the promise of a great whodunit, maybe I’m being a little selfish with the amount of food Johnson has put on my plate. It feels like there should have been more to Knives Out, and I’m not ashamed that I wanted a whole meal not just the turkey. It’s Thanksgiving after all.