Review: Knives Out

Knives Out, directed by Rian Johnson, tells the tale of wealthy old crime novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) who one morning is found dead right after his 85th birthday. Although the death has been ruled a murder, private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) suspects foul play is involved and investigates as evidently everyone in the Thrombey estate seems to have an ulterior motive in wanting the old man dead.

Director Rian Johnson has recently built up a reputation of a guy who likes to subvert expectations; he’s made films like Looper and Star Wars: The Last Jedi which accomplished exactly that though with more or less middling results. Now he’s back with a good ole-fashioned whodunit film that is technically his best work as a filmmaker, but it’s still flawed in some key aspects. Knives Out is a entertaining film to say the least, and I guess that’s all that matters.

Johnson as a director is solid. There’s a lot of attention to detail in the background that is really worth commending. The cinematography is purposeful, the editing’s on point, the characters are unique and colorful, and all the performances were pretty solid overall. Daniel Craig gives a fine performance despite his goofy accent and Ana de Armas arguably gives the best performance out of everyone.

My only real problems lie within the story. The film doesn’t really do a good job of hiding the big reveal as it’s made pretty obvious who the big bad guy in the film really is. There were also several “action scenes” that felt like they could’ve been cut out since all they did was dragged the plot out even longer. Outside of those issues though that’s about all I had against this film.

Overall this was a fun film to watch. It’s not exactly memorable in any sense for me but I enjoyed it for what it was. People expecting a winding whodunit with a lot of clever twists and turns might leave feeling underwhelmed especially with the film’s pretty predictable ending, but otherwise if this sounds like a film you might like then go check it out and see for yourself.

Final Verdict: 6/10