Knives Out (Dir Rian Johnson, 2h 10m)

In 1920, Agatha Christie, having been turned down by six separate publishers, finally introduced her creation Hercule Poirot to the world in The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Whilst it would take several more novels to refine her indomitable style, in which her creations, Poirot and Miss Marple set about uncovering a multitude of murderers, is practically infamous for its formula. A murder is committed, Poirot or Marple arrive, set about the clues, unveiling secrets, with the shocking twist (or, indeed, twists) coming towards the end of the novel, before Marple or Poirot almost ceremoniously brings the dramatis personae of the novel together, explains the motives and their discoveries, and unveils the murderer.

When Christopher Plummer's mystery novellist Harlan Thrombey, is found dead, foul play is afoot, with the antagonist Thrombeys all possible suspect. Into this, brought by the smell of mystery, and a wad of bank-notes from a mysterious unnamed employer, strolls Daniel Craig's beautifully idiosyncratic southern-drawling detective, Benoit Blanc, a beautifully nuanced but perfectly cast role who one could happily see Craig play in any number of adventures. Blanc, together with his self-appointed sidekick, Harlan's nurse and confidant Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas), must get to the bottom of the mystery, which only deepens and grows ever more tense when the family's own secrets, and their relationship with Marta, begin to spill over with the opening of Harlan's will.

Nowhere does Johnson skewer what made Christie's novels tick better than the Thrombey family, and, with Johnson's script, and the veritable galaxy of acting stars, they are as memorable as they are dysfunctional, from real estate mogul, Linda (a wonderfully acidic Jamie Lee Curtis), together with her henpecked husband Richard, (Don Johnson), to lifestyle guru and widow-in-law, Joni (Toni Collette), who floats between yoga oneness and sharp-tongued cruelty in one scene alone.

Indeed, the opening scene, post-Marta's discovery of the lifeless Harlan, sets up the tone of the rest of the film brilliantly, with sequences repeated with each branch of the family closest to the kindly patriachal figure, intercutting narratives, and even the first clue, before introducing Blanc, who lounges, almost out of focus for most of the opening sequence, before making himself known. It perfectly sets up that no-one in this film can be trusted, and everyone, in the classic Christie tradition, is a suspect, but does so in a blackly comic way, showing exactly how fallible all of these characters are, as testimony turns to bickering.

Their offspring, whilst not crossexamined at this point, but introduced in flashback and as the family drift back together after the funeral, range from alt-right Internet troll Jacob (Jaeden Martell), a character who one cannot help but see some of Johnson's own dealings with the keyboard warriors in the aftermath of The Last Jedi, a detestable and purile individual given a wonderfully odious streak by Martell, to "social justice warrior" Meg (Katherine Langford), who is eventually seen to be as two faced as the rest of her family.

Indeed, with the audience almost exclusively with either Marta or Blanc, the two outsiders of the group, Johnson neatly leans on this two-faced aspect all throughout the film-like another great mystery writer, JB Priestly, whose An Inspector Calls, mainstay of secondary educations everywhere, does gleam through from time to time, as the sins of the family are almost gleefully stripped bare, lies and deceit exposed, till the finale practically leaves us rooting for the only person untarred by the fallout of Harlan's death.

Craig, in my opinion, has never been better; released from the shackles of Bond, this is a wonderfully strange performance,, in which he is completely uninhibited, allowed to fully disappear into his character, rather than play a cinematic audience surrogate. One moment, in which he quizzes the ancient matriarch of the Thrombey clan, (a sublimely, comically understated performance byK Callan), is perhaps the sweetest, and certainly the most underplayed scene in the film, in which Blanc comforts the mourning mother of Harlan, whilst even Blanc is not safe from the film's wit, with one scene showing him, very uncooly, lounged back in his car seat, iPod on, singing along whilst pandemonium reigns in the background. Yet, despite this, he is still every inch the Bogartine super sleuth, deliberately and slowly unpicking the film, with some of his finest moments coming in the finale.


And then there is Chris Evans' Ransom, who is practically this film's secret weapon, a gleefully foul mouthed performance that practically sweeps away the decade that he's spent in Steve Rogers' all-American boots, and reminds us that he's just a damn fine actor, if leaning heavily into his comedic side, as he cusses out his entire family, and gloats over an unexpected turn of fortune for the family as a whole. That he's benched for most of the first act, like ageing a fine wine, only increases his potency, and makes his performance truly shine as he surveys the wreckage he leaves as the family's black sheep.

For, if this film has one strength that the average whodunnit novel does not have, it is bitingly funny humour; whilst many of Christie's characters do, in fairness belong to satire, never did they get this funny. Some of the best scenes, for example, arise from the pure dysfunction of a bickering household of three lines of the family-at one point, Richard ends up in a fistfight with youngest Thrombey sibling, Walt, (Michael Shannon), the marketing and publishing head of Harlan's book press, and a character trapped between his father's legacy and the severe stipulations he has put upon it, practically brawl.

Elsewhere, Johnson has great fun in simply letting these characters bounce off each other-Meg and Jacob hate each other, with their sole shared scene little more than a slanging match, a clearly drunk Joni tries to dance with an extremely frosty Linda, who herself refuses to throw dirt at her brother and brother's widow, only for Richard, whose animosty for Walt is palpable, to call his brother in law a hanger on. That all of these interactions serve, rather than slow, the patient ratcheting up of the main plot, is an impressive balancing act, and once the mechanism begins to, in that quintissentially Christie-esque way, click into place and slowly, intricately unfold, the humour only increases, with an enjoyably messy and exhiliartingly naff car chase, an increasingly volatile family and a ever meaner, ever sharper wit to proceedings.

But, most importantly, in a world where Johnson's previous film certainly felt like the most political Star Wars ever got, in a world of ever-increasing divides, what Johnson adds, without question, is the element of the present turmoil in America. For, if Christie and the mystery genre in general, is a world of undetermined time, somewhere between the end of the First and the beginning of the Second World Wars, only occasionally touching upon the political and the Other, then Knives Out is a skewering of America under Trump, with two of its characters discussing, at length, in front of Marta, that Mexicans, and indeed, other South Americans, are only truly useful when they work hard, and that, of course, if they are illegal migrants that they should be sent back.

In placing us in the shoes of a character that, because of her link to the only truly kindly figure in the film, the figure of Harland himself, she is regarded as part of the family, when the film's biggest twists come, with Marta at the centre of them, we see how quickly even this genteel American family turn savage, how, to paraphrase the title, the knives come out for her, how this racial fear of the Other defines even the most liberal of Americans. There is one moment that practically defines this film, and even though it's the single funniest moment of the film, a veritable twist in of itself, in which Johnson completely wrongfoots us, and undoubtedly releases that ornate mechanism of the film's second half in which Blanc is released to truly detect, it is the moment that we, the audience, begin to see the ugly face of every single member of the Thrombeys.

What Johnson produces, in Knives Out is a whodunit in the finest tradition, a wickedly funny, intricate, star studded music box of a film that slowly, exquisitely unravels, until we are left with a murderer and a final, perfectly executed twist. What he does, however, is bring a sense of modern fears into a genre that has almost defiantly stayed in the past until recently, and certainly, around the Thrombey family is a microcosm of the milieu of America at present. But, in that grandest tradition of the genre, perhaps the truely rare quality of this film is in watching it simply unfurl, watch a good-old-fashioned murder mystery go through its paces.

What Johnson gives us, in short, is the best detective story this decade, a perfectly wrought, sharply comic film about a murder, a suspect, and a detective, intertwining with a film about race, class and the generational divide-it is, to give it the highest plaudit possible, the best whodunit Christie, Chandler, and the rest never actually wrote.

Rating: Must See: Personal Recommendation